


good on paper

by waspishly



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Cat/Human Hybrids, Catboys & Catgirls, Hybrids, Johnny Seo is a himbo, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Only kind of!, Side KunTen, Tsundere Lee Taeyong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23581522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspishly/pseuds/waspishly
Summary: There are two very prevalent problems in Johnny Seo’s life at the moment. Both of which, unfortunately, go hand in hand:1) his coworker is the cutest catboy he’s ever seen2) his workplace has a strict no-dating between employees policyOr: in which Johnny tries to woo his jaded deskmate, who’s a nightmare of a workaholic, absolutely not interested in him, and a stickler for constant professionalism. Just with a fluffy tail and an extra set of ears.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 78
Kudos: 745





	1. finer points

**Author's Note:**

> BuckAROO ROO ROO! Im back on my johnyong bs sooner than expected! I tried to churn this out way too quickly and it didnt work out so I’m posting this as a chaptered fic
> 
> I’ve never written a hybrid au before, so if the usual pictureframe doesn't fit, sorry!

“Workplace crushes are absolutely normal– and should absolutely _never_ be acted out on.”

That was one of the first things Jaehyun had told Johnny at this particular firm, tone mockingly serious as he shook his finger. “I heard the old boss threatened to get someone actually assassinated over it.”  
  
Feet kicked up his desk, he looked the very image of the modern entrepreneur’s dream, confident and collected. Having no reason to assume Jaehyun was anything other than that, Johnny had nodded solemnly.

 _Easy,_ Johnny had thought back then, because he wasn't omniscient and could have never predicted the ease of which Lee Taeyong eradicated that naively made assumption.  
  


Lee Taeyong, who had been assigned his cubicle partner by week three, Lee Taeyong who put five flowerpots between them before they had even exchanged niceties, Lee Taeyong who never looks anything but impeccable, who’s nearly a head shorter than him, and Lee Taeyong who is— a catboy.

Here’s the thing: Johnny could look over that fact easily, he isn’t one of the idiots who still think hybrids don’t deserve anything that pets don’t. He himself hadn’t known many hybrids in his life, let alone closely. And since he slacked heavily on watching the news or keep up with politics, there wasn’t much beside the broad common knowledge one should have about hybrids.

The scene where they flourished the most was the entertainment industry. That branch was positively bustling with hybrids, since they tended to be upsettingly gorgeous, entertaining, and the animal attributes were seen as desirable,- and thus always made for great TV.

Hybrids pursuing such common jobs as desk accountants or Marketing assistant was not a common occurrence yet, but in the last couple of years there had been a movement of them slipping into normal life, picking up ordinary jobs to live a normal living. By now, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for your cashier to be young boy with an additional set of floppy ears peeking out from their work-cap, or teachers with tails hanging out from underneath past-knee length skirts.

Despite that, Johnny could count on one hand the amount of times he had actively interacted with a hybrid in his life beyond the borders of polite smalltalk.

  
The meaning of this? That after more than twenty-five years of being alive, Johnny still had no idea on how to approach Taeyong respectfully.

In the beginning, Taeyong had been a border Johnny couldn’t breach. It was if trying to get footing underneath you when all Taeyong gave was quicksand. He politely, but firmly, rejected Johnny’s tentative invitations of going to lunch together, time after time again. Work, was always the excuse.

 _No, I can’t, there’s a report I have to finish, Doyoung asked me to review this random thing, sorry I’m late on the finiancial re-up_ — Taeyong is always working to never be late on anything. Weirdly enough, Johnny begins to think that Taeyong has never actually been late on handing in anything.

And he never really takes breaks either, besides going to the vending machine to get a twinkie cream roll and back to his table. Donghyuck’s running gag is that Loch Ness will be scientifically proven before Lee Taeyong will take a self-indulgent, deserved break from work.  
  


Johnny pulled a lot of tricks out of his pockets; the one’s he hadn’t used since picking up strangers in bars during freshman years. Even those didn’t do much more than a frown and a twitch of an ear, before Taeyong’s tired eyes slide back to his computer. Even compliments get reactions as insignificant as just a sideways beat of the tail, and an absent-minded smile.

What had landed the best so far, what had actually managed to make Taeyong smile, was complimenting his impeccable outfits he arrived to work in every day. so Johnny remains commenting each time he thinks a color looks particularly good on Taeyong, brings out his eyes, or shapes his shoulders nicely. Or even just if he likes something as small as the combination of little earrings Taeyong has picked that day.

It’s those little acts that get a rosy flush to Taeyong’s cheeks.

He’s always put together proper, no creased shirts or crinkled lapels. Funnily enough, that only made the lack of sleep more prominent in contrast; That every cleanly pressed shirt brought out the deep blue framing the bridge of his nose and bags under his eyes just that much more.

Sometimes, Taeyong positively looks like someone dug out a random corpse from the graveyard, and combed their hair into slick waves, and put them in stainless, impeccable clothing; gave them a kiss on the cheek and sent them to work. 

Johnny doesn’t know what it is, but something in him just immediately takes to Taeyong; latches on to him before the first week is over. Regardless of his seeming cold exterior.  
Mark says that it's the ears that bring out even the most hidden nurturing and motherly parts of people, and Johnny couldn’t even fully deny that in the moment.

Donghyuck’s interpretation differs from Mark’s vastly; to him, it seems that Johnny must get off on feeling completely insignificant to someone. When Johnny gets a giddy sort of happiness from Taeyong actually smiling at the fifth joke he’s told that day, he begins to worry that Donghyuck’s assumption might be true.

Maybe it’s the pink-tinted vision of perceiving someone through infatuation, but Johnny thinks that there’s an unspoken softness to Taeyong, one that nobody really pays attention to. And maybe it's that what makes it harder to give up on his advances, since each glimmer of a bashful giggle, or an amused snort- even just a dismissing roll of eyes– they make him want more; want to push on through to what Taeyong has shuttered from most other people.

At first, that meant tentative jokes that made Mark laugh from a cubicle away, but never got more out of Taeyong except polite smiles. Pretty quickly, Johnny caught on to that fact that Lee Taeyong did not like getting distracted from his work. Also didn't take long to realize that that made Taeyong the odd one out- with them being surrounded by the likes of Lucas, Jaehyun, Donghyuck and Mark. Distracting each other with nonsense pulled out of their asses was the norm here.

What follows is that slowly, theres a silent camaderie between them that unfolds. It’s in the way Taeyong says two sentences about how his way to work was in the morning, and Johnny will agree with _that clavern crossing traffic was awful— yeah- absolutely,_ and Taeyong will laugh with his pretty white teeth, and his ears will twitch adorably when Johnny says he likes his choice of clothes, and then they’ll work. 

And yet, Johnny never really manages to progress past that; The arms-length away of stranger-politeness that Taeyong keeps him on, despite Johnny’s infatuation with him being painfully obvious.  
  
Johnny Seo is not shallow. He’s always been really confident in the fact that a pretty face does as much for him as a wooden shoe if the personality isn’t right. But the fact that he doesn't care much about appearances doesn't change that Taeyong is _infuriatingly_ cute. Beautiful, too, chiseled face with soft, pretty features. One of the thirst things he thought about Taeyong, actually, was that Taeyong had definitely picked the wrong industry for his career.

He’s got a face made for cameras to be on.

Taeyong’s got eyes as big as a doll, and the tiniest elongated canines that poke into his lower lip when he focuses particularly hard on something.

It’s a blessing and a curse that they’re deskmates. Because the cubicles are set up so the two computers of the workers are back-to-back, and they’re on the respective ends facing each other.  
It’s great because Johnny can have his crush festering for weeks due to the easiness he can sneak glances at Taeyong, but on the other hand it’s bad because that exactly is the main reason he has accumulated extra-hours like other people have cutlery in their kitchen drawers.

Johnny doesnt really blame himself, though, because apparently their CEO loves forced bonding experiences and, granted, Johnny thinks he’s _bonding_ alright. 

Bonding with the ever-repeating thought of _‘oh my god that was so cute,’_ whenever Taeyong does anything. 

Johnny’s crush is already well-festered, when Taeyong sighs for the nth time that hour, standing up to pat around each his bags.

He plops down again, and sighs again. Even louder. Johnny tries to bite down on his smile at the slightly petulant act, odd out of Taeyong’s usual behavior.

“You okay?” Johnny asks, momentarily stopping to type away on his keyboard, lifting his eyes to Taeyong.

“No,” Taeyong answers, ears flat in his hair. “My lips are so dry it’s killing me and I forgot my lipbalm at home.”

Wincing at Taeyong’s, indeed, chapped lips, Johnny nods in understanding. “You can use mine if you want to.”

Johnny digs through his cluttered drawer with a random assortment of things he might need at work, rolling the chapstick across the desk when he finds it. Taeyong leans forward gratefully, grabbing it before it can roll across the edge.

With his chapstick in Taeyong’s hands, Johnny’s heart flutters weirdly as he watches him screw the cap off, teeth dragging over his lower lip.

 _Oh_ , Johnny thinks, realizing that the reason for Taeyong's discomfort are his sharpened canines, scratching across his lower lip uncomfortably.

There’s a mindless wish for an indirect kiss but instead the product is rubbed on the back of Taeyong’s hand, applied to his lips with a finger. It’s such a clean way to do it, somehow very _Taeyong_ — Johnny barely catches the chapstick before it clatters to the floor.  
  
“Thanks, Johnny,” Taeyong says, dragging his finger over his plush lips, over the reddened spots where his teeth rub. He sends Johnny a grateful little smile, one that pokes one canine over his lower lip, shiny and soft looking.

“Sure thing,” Johnny returns, and it sounds awkwardly choked.

Johnny actually finds himself bemoaning the loss of an indirect kiss. That’s the extent of how disgusting his little crush has already turned.

So, Johnny has weird love for the little fangs Taeyong has, and the way they’re only visible sometimes. Or how they dig into his lower lip when he focuses particularily hard on something; the blunt, elongated teeth pushing into plushness.

Johnny isn’t a creep that goes haywire over Taeyong’s cat attributes- or anyone’s for that matter, but it takes only few long observant looks and annoying comments from Donghyuck for everybody to know that Jonny is a big fan of the ears peeking out of Taeyong jet black shock of hair.

Taeyong also has a tail, one that’s black and fluffy, but Johnny has seen that only a handful of times because Taeyong:

1) sits down most of the day 

2) wears it under his pants most of the time

3) has basically never arrived later than, or left earlier than Johnny

So even if he wears his tail out, it’s underneath the table and shielded from Johnny’s view for a majority of the time. Most days, the only thing Johnny will see of Taeyong’s tail is a black tip peeking out from under loose slacks.

It’s a pity,- but thankfully the ears keep Johnny strung along in the meantime. Black, sleek and shiny, with the most adorable pink insides visible when they’re perked up.  
  


Taeyong’s ears by themself are very expressive- they twitch in whatever direction noise comes from, or perk up when he’s liking something, attentive and its just _so_ — 

Johnny knows he’s got a grown, independent man in front of him, _he knows,_ and that's why he keeps suppressing the repetition of urges to coo at Taeyong. Doesn't mean it’s a crime to find him adorable in silence.  
Cute, he just thinks to himself. He wonders if he were to make a list out of it, scratch a dash with every thought, if he’d reach 500 strikes by the end of the week.

He’d never call Taeyong _cute_ or _kitty_ to Taeyong’s face, even if he refers to him like that in his head, because Taeyong strikes him as the type to leave his face bleeding if he were to be belittled at work.

Because Lee Taeyong works _hard-hard._ Not a single time- in the over four months he’s worked here– has Taeyong left work at the 5P.M. or 8P.M. clock-mark Johnny _knows_ his shift ends. Because they’ve got the same schedule- _on paper_. What Taeyong does is basically freelancing on company hours. Why the catboy does that, Johnny doesn’t know- They don’t even get their regular pay for extra hours.  
Johnny assumes that Lee Taeyong maybe doesnt even know when his work ends, and informs him kindly every now and then that _now_ would be the time to leave for home. 

Johnny overpulls his hours pretty regularly, and yet he’s almost a stranger to the sight of Taeyong actually packing up his things before he does.

Seven times out of ten Taeyong will also be in his seat earlier than needed, falling into a mostly emotionless trance of typing out reports over the day.

Which is why it’s even odder, when Johnny gets pulled out of his work by Taeyong slamming his desk-phone into the receiver with an unseen-before force. Then, he’s standing up jerkily, head raised as if looking for someone across the cubicles– but the action is accompanied by a stack of file sorters clattering to the ground off of his table. Johnny hears Taeyong swear- not even under his breath like the rare times he does swear- but _loudly_. It’s both very, very out of the ordinary, and odd. 

It’s what makes a part of Johnny keep tabs on the situation, even as he’s not directly looking.

Before all the files are back on the table, Johnny is once again drawn to the situation by Ten hurrying past his table to stop by Taeyong. Ten is the other hybrid on their floor of the department. Two in one department, which is already more than most other companies can boast with. But that’s not what matters in the moment- what is, are how Taeyong’s ears are flattened in a way Johnny hasn’t seen before.

Immediately, Ten begins fussing over Taeyong, touching a hand to his forehead, sitting him back down in the chair, all the while they exchange hushed, urgent sentences in such a fast-pace Johnny can’t even try to follow. He can barely understand anything of the talk, but he _can_ catch on to some other things.

Taeyong's ears are almost completely buried in his hair, flattened and pushed back so much they’re barely even visible. And even if they weren't— his frantic eyes and ashen face would be enough for Johnny to recognize the other man wasn’t feeling well. Ten’s tail beats quickly, agitated in a way it isn’t usually.

There are only bits of the hushed, urgent conversation he can catch.

“—hy now? Didn’t you get checked?”

“I _don't know,_ I-“  
  
Johnny slows his typing on the keyboard, straining to understand some whole sentences.

“You think it’s because o—?”

Johnny doesn't manage to understand the last bit of that sentence. Curiously, he looks up, expecting to see Taeyong and Ten in their previous position, but when he does, it’s to both Taeyong and Ten already looking at him. A sinking feeling manifests in his gut.

“Can I help with something?” He asks, unsure, getting up to step to the open side of the cubicle, next to the table. Taeyong steps away with a pained expression, to the back of the cubicle and further away from him. Johnny feels something shrivel inside of him. Maybe that’s his confidence, obliterated away into dust-particles after a so very clear rejection.

“No, thank you, Johnny, we’ve got it,” Ten responds, easily, stepping forward in the space between him and Taeyong. There's a simpering smile on his face, and a cheery tone of faked corporate talk. Johnny’s worry doesn't recede, but the very hard-to-misunderstand signals make him sit down on his own seat again, defeated. Ten can be pretty scary if he wants to be.

Johnny has an excel sheet open, blank, watching as Ten and Taeyong gather Taeyong’s things. They talk, lowly and sharply, Taeyong keeping on to shake his head in a weird urgency, and then they exit Johnny’s vision at the next bend of walls.

A beat passes, then there’s the squeaky sound of an office chair rolling across the linoleum floor.  
  


“What was that all about,” Jaehyun asks, leant half into Johnny’s cubicle.  
  


“No idea.” Johnny responds, eyebrows still furrowed and on the spot Taeyong left his field of vision.  
  


Taeyong had seemed fine the morning through, besides declining coffee and sighing a few times more than normally. Thinking back, Taeyong _had_ seemed a little more distracted than usual, but nothing too out of the ordinary, right?  
Well, he had begun to look a little bit like kind of a mess, tugging off his tie an hour prior, unbuttoning the top of his shirt some time following the earlier, complaining about the broken AC. Johnny had been pretty sure that it wasn’t broken, but he’d just thought Taeyong was a little stressed, and couldn’t use any backtalk.  
  
Compared to others, he’d look perfectly composed; but to Johnny,— who’s stared at the kitten for a minimum of 30 percent of each working day that he’s at the company— he should _know_ if something’s off.

Yet he can’t understand. Why suddenly call the CEO’s personal assistant over to escort you off the department floor? Johnny can’t find much soundproof logic in that scenario.

Donghyuck, who seemingly never does any real work, and is _always_ listening in, props his head over the drywall. Johnny jerks a little at the sudden movement in the corner of his eye.

“Here’s a tip, _newbie_ ,” he says, tilting his head as if he’s talking to a kid. Johnny doesn’t mention he’s been here for well over a handful of months already.

“Don’t try to understand the cats. Like ever, don't even _try_ to get them.” 

Johnny pulls a grimace, turning toward Jaehyun, who just shrugs non-committedly. Following that, he pushes himself off of the edge of Johnny’s table to do an artful spin in his chair, and sit-walk back into his own cubicle.

Blissfully uncaring of the coffee spilled on Johnny’s papers. Donghyuck still has his head propped up on the edge of the wall like he’s a muppet, and he makes a smug expression.

Johnny is glad he has Taeyong as his cubicle-mate. He really is. 

Wiping only drags the brown stains down the paper instead of getting rid of them, and Johnny sighs pitifully. He gets distracted by Taeyong’s mannerisms and handsomeness a lot, but he doubts Donghyuck's cubicle mate could get anything done, ever. Poor Mark.

  
  


Taeyong doesn't come back the next day. Neither does he on friday morning, and the only info Johnny gets is by Ten, who stops by his table to tell him Taeyong’s gravely ill and excused for a few days.

Later, whatever is going on with his favorite distraction quickly slips to the bottom of his list of worries, because Jaehyun rolls in to donate some company- _or so he says_ \- just to watch Johnny type away for ten minutes before telling him that he’s got all the sources and numbers messed up.

That’s an hour before Johnny’s shift would have ended.

He is still in his seat when it’s nearing midnight, his excel spreadsheet in front of him, and the pressure of time on his shoulders.

Ten had stopped by once more, saying it needed to be on Kun’s desk by tomorrow morning so the managers could discuss next month’s strategies.

Johnny is hungry as fuck, tired as shit, and mildly frustrated. He’s glad Jaehyun caught on to his mistake of using last months numbers and thereby saving him from embarrassment– but right now he's so done with this he wouldn’t mind their CEO thinking him completely incompetent in favor of going home.

Thankfully, he’s only got little left to finish. The janitor and cleaning staff have already worked around a slowly spiraling Johnny; afterward, he’s enveloped by silence, the only sound being the tapping of his keyboard and the ticking off the clock on the wall.  
  
That is, until the unlocking mechanism of the door is heard- unnoticeable in a certain level of background noise, but distinctive now. He doesnt look up, up until someone makes a surprised noise and the steps on linoleum floor pitter to a halt.

Its _Taeyong._ And it takes Johnny two seconds longer than it should to recognize him. Dressed in comfortable clothing, informal– a sweater so big it almost swallows him whole and some cropped pants- he doesn’t look like the Taeyong he knows. Johnny only knows him in his array of business attire.

“What are you doing here,” Taeyong asks, voice so genuine in surprise and confused expression, that it makes Johnny laugh for the first time since noon. Taeyong looks genuinely affronted, ears a little lower than they normally would be.

“Could ask you the same thing,” Johnny returns, chuckling lightly. Taeyong is a welcome distraction as he finally gets to move his eyes off of the light blue screen. It’s pretty dark, but the lights of the city catch on the vague shaoe of Taeyong’s tail as he moves. It swishes unsurely, side to side.

The catboy regards him warily as he comes close to their cubicle.

“Finishing up a report I had messed up on.” Johnny answers the first question. He rubs the balls of his hands over his burning eyes, blinking until the uncomfortable feeling subsides. By now Taeyong is already on the other side of their space, moving things around his own table. Johnny wishes he could have gotten another peek at Taeyong’s tail.

Sighing, Johnny clicks save on his screen, then sends the file off via bluetooth to print.

Johnny had flicked the overhead lights off earlier because he could work better with lowlights, so it’s pretty dark in their department. Nevertheless, there's enough light to reflect on Taeyong’s short canines as he speaks. They’re only barely longer than his teeth were, but It’s still cute, Johnny's brain supplies. 

Taeyong hadn’t even commented on the darkness, Johnny realizes. He wonders if a cat-hybrid’s perks entail the same high low-light vision normal cats seem to have. He makes mental note to look that up, Taeyong always kind off shutters off when asked about his animal attributes.

“So?” He prompts again, reminding Taeyong of an answer to the previous question. Because by Ten’s earlier comment, Taeyong was gravely ill and that had led Johnny to believe Taeyong wasn't even supposed to step a foot in the building.

“Wanted to water my plants,” Taeyong murmurs, not really looking Johnny in the eyes. Even as Johnny, too, stands up, Taeyong only spares him curt glances.

“Mark put your cup in the sink, if that's what you’re looking for.” Johnny says, after watching Taeyong aimlessly rummage around his cluttered desk. The catboy has one very specific cup he always uses to water his plants, and since that was what he came here to do, Johnny easily connects one and one. 

“Ah,” Taeyong just says, flitting by Johnny’s side weirdly quickly. 

Johnny walks to their copy and printer machine, collecting the slowly emerging sheets of paper. Since they’re the only ones on the floor, it’s possible to hear the tap water turn on in the little kitchen-room. Makes it possible to hold a conversation across the department, too.

Thinking about the fact Taeyong came here just to water his plants makes Johnny huff out a bout of laughter in disbelief. He raises his voice a little. “Couldn’t you just have texted someone? You shouldn't be out and about, I thought.”

With the low lights illuminating barely anything, Taeyong is but a mere shape in the corner of his eyes as he emerges from the kitchen, full cup in hand.  
  


“Yeah, I guess I could’ve.” Contrasting with Johnny’s limited vision, is Taeyong’s voice, clear as day in the weird little situation they’re in. It’s mumbled a little into the neck of his hoodie.

“But?” The papers crawl out of the printer painfully slow.

“I wasn’t really capable of thinking over the las—“ Taeyong stutters to a verbal halt. “Sorry, I’m kind of all over the place,” Taeyong continues, voice rushing off into embarrassment. 

Johnny smiles, because the mental image of the funny little ticks Taeyong’s ears make when he’s flustered are clear as day in his mind. 

“No worries. Are you feeling any better?” 

“Uh-,” Taeyong ducks his head. “It’s coming along.”

His tail beats incessantly, without a constant tempo. Flicking from side to side in a cattishly cute motion.

Maybe it’s the fact that ten hours of staring at excel sheets have melted his brain right out of his skull- or maybe it’s the fact that Taeyong has never before really worn something like that before. But he can’t look away from Taeyong’s swishing tail. It looks sleek and fluffy at the same time, fur feathered slightly on the underside of the bottom half. The urge to have it in his hands, just once, is very prevalent in his mind, he tries to drown it out by lining up the already printed papers. His eyes flit back to Taeyong’s shape again nevertheless.

Its so– his brain falters. It's so cute that he wants to coo. Or cry.

Sometimes, Taeyong makes it pretty easy to forget that he is a catboy. Right now, Johnny’s smacked in the face by the brick-like fact that he _very_ much is nearly half a kitten. 

See, Taeyong seems to make it his second job to be as cleanly composed as possible, professional and curt. Most of the times, he doesn't even move off of his chair, or has his tail in his pants, hair styled around his ears, lips pressed together when he smiles as to not show his fangs. Johnny wonders if that’s because he’s worried about a diminish of respect from peers when he wears it out, or if he’s just self-conscious about it.  
Johnny would hate that. In his opinion, Taeyong’s ears and tail are the absolute cutest and prettiest stuff he’s ever seen. That doesn’t mean they take off a chunk of Taeyong’s character, either- to Johnny, Taeyong is just a regular person, same as him or any other coworker, just with a tail and a set of perky ears. 

How to some people that adds up to Taeyong not deserving his position in the company, is beyond Johnny’s comprehension.  
  


The machine beeps when it’s got its job done, and the sound rips Johnny out of his thoughts. He stacks the papers neatly, slipping a paper clip over the edge, and makes his way to Ten’s table. It’s situated off of the cubicle-hell, in front of the milky glass-panels of Kun's office and meeting rooms.

He steals a sticky note and pen from the table, and sticks a little note with an excuse on top of the stack before walking back.

Taeyong moves around his working space and when he seems to be done, he walks toward the floor exit.

“Wait,” Johnny calls, gathering up his jacket and bag, “I'm just finishing up.”

Taeyong waits near the entry door of their floor, and Johnny slows down from his first few hasty steps– taking his time when his eyes drop down to Taeyong’s flicking tail. Gotta cherish it while you still can. 

The elevator dings, and Johnny steps in to lean against the wall, while Taeyong positions himself on the opposite side, standing with a wired tension in his body.

In the bright lights of the elevator, Johnny can take the first proper look at Taeyong. His skin is flushed, kind of pale but the apples of his cheeks are bright red anyway. A sheen of sweat lays atop his neck and forehead, reflecting just a tiny bit.  
Johnny’s eyebrows tug together. Did Taeyong drive up to their company in the middle of the night while he was burning up a fever?

Pondering, he stares at the side of Taeyong’s face a little unashamed while the elevator rattles through the floors. Taeyong’s face is flushed up to his cheekbones, and his ears twitch atop of his head, into Johnny’s direction and back again.

Silence stretches, but Johnny isn’t bored. Not in the least, as he obverserves Taeyong’s weird fidgety behavior.

His tail is doing all sorts of things, swishing left and right pretty quickly, and when the elevator dings to a stop, it stills the swishing and the end of it curls around Taeyong’s own leg. Johnny wonders what that means, and makes a mental note to brush up on hybrid communication. Last time he had present in his mind which tail positions meant what message, was during middle school.

The elevator makes it just three floors down before the doors open to an above chest-height wagon of cleaning supplies. A head of the cleaning staff pops up somewhere behind the handle, greeting them and motioning to make space. Taeyong’s head dips curtly, and he shuffles closer to the wall on Johnny’s side to let a small group of people and the wagon in.

The short man vanishes on the other side of the cleaning wagon, but he chatters away loudly on the telephone he had pressed between shoulder and head while entering. The rest, too, talks quietly out of reach of Johnny’s eyes.

The elevator doors slide closed, and a floor passes, and Johnny busies himself tracing Taeyong’s back before him with his eyes– staring at the back of Taeyong’s bright red neck, his twitching ears, no doubt following the conversation of the other man. His shoulders shake under the fabric of his hoodie when he inhales and exhales in a long, exhausted sound. His ears perform a little dance of positions when he does that. He shudders some, leading Johnny to think he’s really got to be feverish.

For a few moments Johnny doesnt do much but that, looking at Taeyong, before he feels a sensation against his leg.

A little surprised, he looks down to see Taeyong’s tail tentatively touch against the side of his thigh, curling around the back of his knee. Stumped, he stares at the sleek, black tail, before he actually reacts. 

He _wants_ to touch– wonders if would be as prettily smooth as it looks, but he tampers down on that wish strongly. He knows you’re not supposed to touch hybrids animal features without consent. 

“Uh,” he says, smartly. The fluffy tail curls tighter. “Taeyong?”

Taeyong turns his head toward him over his shoulder. His cheekbones reflect with a sheen of sweat, eyes glassy. “Yes?”

“Your—,” Johnny stutters on his own clumsy lips. His voice sounds a little funny. “ _Your tail–”_

Taeyong’s head dips down as he turns, and he makes a noise that's half disappointed, half panicked surprise. “ _Ah_ –,”

The curl lets loose, the tail falling limper, as Taeyong gathers it in his own hands. 

“Sorry about that, Johnny,” he rushes out, unable to meet Johnny’s eyes already turning back around, his cheeks flushed. There’s embarrassment or shame written all over the tense line of his hunched shoulders.

Before Johnny can respond and reassure that he didnt mind, the elevator stops again to let the cleaning staff out, and Taeyong steps away from Johnny with the open space as if burnt. Johnny doesn't feel a little hurt by that. Not at all.

Taeyong holds his tail in his hand firmly, like a loop hanging around the side of his thigh. He sneaks embarrassed gazes over his shoulder every now and then. Johnny racks his mind, thinking how he can make this less awkward– he doesnt mind at all, and that Taeyong doesn’t need to apologize, but he can imagine how embarrassed Taeyong must feel.

Johnny lets his own hand curl around the rod of the elevator-railing, and cant help his thoughts wandering to him being allowed to hold Taeyong’s tail, wants him back beside him. 

He imagines _pshpshing_ to make the shy kitty come back and it makes him huff out a little laugh.

“Hey, Taeyong,” Johnny begins, unsure how to say this without sounding presumptions or stepping on Taeyong’s toes. “Don't worry about it, okay? I- I didnt mind. It’s not like you can really control it, right?”

Taeyong’s ears twitch, flicking against tufts of hair. After a short moment, he shakes his head in a tiny motion. “Not really, no.”

“That’s so weird,” Johnny says, without thinking, and regrets it the second Taeyong's ears flatten, head ducking down. He’s forgotten almost everything he’d learnt about what hybrid’s, so every fact is like a new grain of wisom learned. He stores them all away safely, hoping it makes the right way to behave around Taeyong easier.

He’s not verses in what ears and tails can tell you— but that ears turning back against the head means _not happy with this_ is something everybody knows. 

“ _Not–_ not bad, I mean. It’s fascinating that you have an entire limb that you just can’t control.”

“I can control it.” Taeyong responds, quickly, and Johnny’s eyebrows twitch. “When I focus on it very much. It’s the moments when I don’t that it does what it wants. It’s not something you have a conscious control of, like, a— a finger, that you’ve got an ability to curve and bend when you think of it.”

Johnny listens intently at Taeyong’s rambling, barely biting back the ‘ _cute_ ’ he almost lets slip in response. “Interesting,” he says, instead.

Theres no evolutionary advantage for cat-people’s tails. For the hybrids, their tail is used mainly for communication. There’s just the issue of understanding it _right_. Johnny doesn't know if Taeyong’s tail curling from side to side is a good thing or a bad one.  
Right now, with his tail held in his own hands, it doesn’t matter anyway. Johnny just thinks it could be a good thing to be able to understand all the things Taeyong offers in form of communication, since it’s not that he utilizes talking to express himself, much, anyway.

Eight floors to go.

Taeyong shakes his bangs out of his face, but there’s still strands sticking to his forehead with the perspiration of skin being the glue. He lets go of his tail to gather the rest of hair out of his face, sighing. He definitely looks flushed, sweaty, kind of out it it, to a worrisome extent.

Taeyong’s chest rises and sinks in an irregular tempo, pulling in flat, thin breaths through his mouth.

“Hey, are you okay?” Johnny asks. 

Taeyong’s tail beats unregularly again, swishing. The catboy takes a little time to answer, while his ears twitch.

“Yeah, thanks,” he answers finally.

Johnny makes a little grimace, because he shouldn’t have expected an honest answer from cold, always composed, independent Lee Taeyong. By now, Johnny can assume that Taeyong would rather choke on something than to inconvenience someone else’s day.

“You’re kind of obviously not,” he says, and Taeyong’s shoulders draw up in defensiveness. “I dont think you should be driving like this.”

“I can manage, Johnny,” Taeyong responds, curt, ears turning back. Johnny sighs, but accepts his obvious discomfort as dismissal to not bother Taeyong anymore.

“Sure,” Johnny answers, instead, as the elevator pings, signalling they’ve arrived on the parking garage floor.

  
They part ways, Johnny wishing Taeyong a good recovery and Taeyong nodding in response.

The worry in Johnny’s stomach as he drives doesn’t want to lessen, even as he tries to will it down. Taeyong is a grown man and he’s managed his life perfectly well without an overbearing coworker like Johnny.

Johnny stops at a red light and sighs. He knows he’s being too personal for Taeyong’s liking, partly because he always draws up whenever Johnny tries to dole out niceties. And when he does accept them, Taeyong always makes sure to pay it back. As if he can’t accept that some people just want to be kind without expecting repayment. Johnny has yet to bring Taeyong a coffee without the other assuring to get the next one.

Maybe it’s the animal assets that make something inside Johnny have this urge to take care of him. It's not that he thinks Taeyong is incapable of doing it himself,- but there’s definitely some places to be improved. It can’t be bad to get some hands under the kitten’s arms sometimes. At least to make sure he doesn't work himself to death before he’ll turn thirty-five.

Pulling into his garage, Johnny regrets not asking for Taeyong’s number. Just so that he could text that he made it home safe. It’s not infatuation— just genuine concern everybody should have for a close colleague driving around a busy city, at night, with an obvious high fever going on.  
  


Whatever, he soothes his worry. He’ll just ask Ten on monday if Taeyong isnt back at work by then.

  
  


(^・x・^)

Taeyong is back the next week, and he treats Johnny not much differently than before, kind, but held at a clear arms-length away. His tail is back underneath wide-cut slacks, too, and Johnny is almost disappointed because he actually made the effort to look up some tail’s meanings over the weekend. It was a dive much deeper than he had expected, each new learned fact opening to three new ones, combinations of tail and ears, single movements– Johnny had been overwhelmed sooner than he’d like to admit.

Little facts, things he’d already seen Taeyong do, those stick pretty well. For example, a tail curled into the cat’s own bodyspace usually meant nervousness, a slowly swaying tail meant that Taeyong was focused on something. Ears turned back meant uncomfortableness, while perked-up ears meant active interest in something.  
  


He doesnt get much of a chance to dive down that hole again, since over the next weeks there’s multiple deals with even bigger firms overseas closing, and it’s got the higher-ups in sheer panic. By order from headquarters, nearly every employee is made to work over their reports from the last year, and the mood drops noticeably in the following weeks.

Johnny isnt worried too much. He’s been at this particular company for a little more than half a year, so he’s not taunted by the big hill of one’s prior files.

Taeyong is. 

Noticeably so, in fact, as there’s a definite increase of his coffee-intake, as well as the disheveled looks he arrives to work with. If they are any indicator of how he’s dealing, anyways.  
What definitely is an indicator, is the fact that all the vending machines three floors up and three floors down are cleaned out of cream puff rolls, while Taeyong’s trashcan overflows with plastic wrappers.

Johnny stops on a various floor when he takes up the elevator in the morning, plopping down the sweets on Taeyong’s desk without saying anything.

Taeyong has done so many extra projects that it all comes back to bite him in the ass now, so Johnny doesn’t mind trying to make things a little better.

Johnny watches Taeyong’s head drop onto his table next to his keypad for the sixth time this day alone, and laughs. 

Taeyong’s ears twitch up just _that_ much at the noise, before he lifts his head just enough to stare at Johnny underneath his black fringe.

“Don’t laugh, Johnny Seo. I am mourning the fact that working hard doesn’t pay off,” he groans, and there’s a loud cackle from the cubicle one over in response. 

“Took you long enough to realize-!” Donghyuck’s voice throws back, and Taeyong’s head lifts as the catboy slumps back in his seat, defeated.

“I take back ever calling you a lazy piece of slump,” Taeyong retorts, rubbing a hand over his left ear. “Capitalism is a lie. When the deals are closed I’m never lifting a finger that I dont have to, ever again.”

Johnny scoffs, clicking close on his minesweeper game window. “Promise?”

“Promise.” 

Unsurprisingly, that promise falls apart just three days after the deals are closed, and Taeyong once again declines going for drinks with their colleagues in favor of finishing another paper.

Donghyuck is the one to call him out on it, and to snip at his ear unkindly when Taeyong snaps a lie of an excuse. Johnny almost wants to scold him for it, but there's no negative response to the touch from Taeyong except a loud sigh as he gives in.   
  


Within the next hours, it becomes very apparent of just how bad at holding his alcohol Taeyong is. One pint of beer into the evening, and he’s a giggly mess, collapsing in and onto Doyoung or Johnny (the two on each side of him) with almost every sentence out of Mark’s or Taeil’s mouths.

Since it’s a friday evening the bar is crowded, and so they’re huddled around a standing-height table. The top of it is uncomfortably sticky when paid attention to, and Johnny had noticed at the start of the evening how Taeyong had avoided to lay his hands on top of it. With increasing intoxication, those inhibitions, like many others around Taeyong’s personality, have fallen aside.

He’s much more expressive than during work hours, too.

Unafraid to curl a hand around Johnny’s bicep to get him to pay attention to a story he’s telling; vocal, too, butting in to stories and laughing loudly. Taeyong’s general poise Yuta lovingly calls _the stick up his ass_ seems much, much more looser around Taeyong.

  
Johnny thinks that he could get used to that.

  
Johnny finds himself missing that Taeyong by Monday, when once again his jokes between working hours get not much more than a chuckle and roll of eyes in response, when he’d had Taeyong doubling over in laughter just days ago.

  
  


“No idea how you decided that wooing our resident ice-prince of the department would be a good idea,” Jaehyun says, when Johnny complains about his nonexistent advances in cracking Taeyong’s shell of frighteningly consistent politeness.

“I dont know either,” Johnny whines and Jaehyun kicks a foot against his shin in response, calling him a big baby. 

“He’s not even a real cat-hybrid,” Jaehyun says, a little bit later in the conversation, when they’ve picked up their coffees and begin walking back around the block to the tall building of the company, trying to make it back before lunchtime is over.

Johnny makes a incredulous wiggle of his eyebrows, and Jaehyun continues.

“I mean,- he’s kind of weird. Not at all what you’d think a cat-person to be. Usually they’re really confident and bratty and just kind of really- _out_? I guess? Like Ten– he’s the posterboy for a typical cat-boy.” Jaehyun takes a sip himself, before continuing his train of thought.

“Taeyong just behaves like he’s a fifty-year old man on his last year of work to collect rent.”

  
Johnny snorts at that, and Jaehyun’s cheeks whisper up in a smile. Then, he lets Jaehyuns words marinate some as he sips his coffee.  
He doesn’t know much about hybrid stereotypes besides the classics, but it’s true that Ten’s and Taeyong’s characters differ vastly from another. It’s almost as if Ten’s got the flamboyance double that went lost on Taeyong. 

“I think it’s cute. It’s admirable that he’s such a hard worker,” Johnny answers, and Jaehyun scoffs at the sappy tone.

“Just give it up,” he says, summer air blowing through his hair. “Even if you buy him a VVS diamond he’s gonna decline it in favor of keeping the company’s honor up and not disappoint Kun. Or maybe he’s just a stickler for rules.” 

Johnny pulls a face at the words, protectiveness surging nonsensically. 

Jaehyun nods his head in admiration. “Mad work ethic anyways, I don’t even try to understand it.”

“I doubt you could understand even if he spelled it out for you,” Johnny responds. “You’re too lazy to even get considered for a promotion three and a half years of working at EN-ct corp.”

Jaehyun's eyebrows rise in affrontation, and his mouth drops open.  
  
“Ouch, man! Fuck you, you cat-fucking fetishist.”

“Not yet, trying to become one,” Johnny cackles, and Jaehyun, too, laughs stupidly loud. 

  
It’s not that he wants to be a fetishist, or that it’s his goal to fuck a catboy. He just wants Lee Taeyong to give him the time of the day.

Once, maybe.

But it’s more likely that maybe he’ll just spend another sad wank in his cold shower, accepting his fate that no matter what he’ll do, Taeyong will not break any company’s rules just to date Johnny.

(^・x・^)

Johnny begins collecting playful jabs when his wristwatch ticks toward three minutes after eight in the morning and theres no sight of Taeyong yet.

He knows something’s wrong when Taeyong isn’t in his place, opposite from him, ten minutes after eight. Jaehyun throws him a questioning expression by twenty minutes after eight, and Johnny’s rolled his chair out on the little hallway to check a look at Ten’s table. Taeyong’s nowhere to be seen, so Johnny can only shrug in unknowingness.

He is kept waiting for nearly half an hour before Taeyong falls into his own rolling chair, heaving for breath for nearly thirty seconds before Johnny dares to strike up conversation. 

“My car broke down and I had to get it towed off of this _giant_ intersection— they’re only gonna be able to tell me what's wrong with my car sometime in the next few days-” he exhales once, harshly, deflating against his chair. He shimmies out of his jacket in jerky motions, mussed hairstrands all over the place.

“So I’m gonna have to use the subway and I _hate_ the subway—”

Taeyong drags a hand over an ear, tugging slightly as he flicks his gaze at the large clock high up on the wall so everyone can see it easily. He sighs. “And now I’m late on handing Doyoung the financial equations he needed for the 8:30 meeting, and— I already hate this day.”

For a second, Johnny doesn’t know what to answer. He had been increasingly more impressed with every word out of Taeyong’s mouth after the other, because, well, frankly, _honestly_ — this might’ve been the most words Taeyong’s said to him in one go.

Trying not to let it show, he carries on normally. Hoping Taeyong won’t pay attention to his burning ears.

Johnny hums in understanding. He had hated depending on their city’s very dysfunctional and lackluster public transport system. He recalls how during college he used to take the bus an hour before the actual beginning of class. Even if the proclaimed travel time was fifteen minutes, it always took around fourty; so he had to get up early just to make it on time. He can't imagine someone whos a stickler for punctuality and professionalism like Taeyong not losing his mind within one week of that.

He says as much, and can’t help but laugh at how quickly Taeyong’s face falls when Johnny recounts his experience. 

Johnny says goodbye a little before eight for once, to avoid the elevator-crowd, gathering his things and smiling when Taeyong waves with his fingers in a tired motion.

He scrolls through his phone on the way down, texting jaehyun as he walks the way out of their building by muscle memory. He looks up when he’s close to the turning door, stops into a halt as his shoulders slump and he groans.  
It's absolutely pouring outside, and he hates driving in the city in the dark when it rains. _Oh well,_ he thinks as he makes his way down to the parking garage.   
  


He’s almost at his car when a thought occurs to him. He stops in the middle of the parking garage, weighing his options; thinking if he’s really going to act out the idea he just had.

 _Yup_ , he thinks, and turns on his heel to make his way right up to their department floor again. The security throws him a confused look, and Johnny throws an apologetic smile his way.

“Forgot something,” he says, wincing, as he waits for the elevator to open again.

Taeyong hasn’t moved since Johnny left, which isnt odd since he literally left just a handful of minutes ago. Yet here he is again. 

Taeyong’s ears twitch and turn toward Johnny approaching, before his face does. Big eyes turn up to him, but Johnny’s rambling out the gate before Taeyong can say a single word.

“I just noticed that it’s pouring outside, and, like, I was thinking— since the next subway station is a five minute walk, I could drive you home,” he stops. Taeyong’s eyebrows tick upwards. “If you’d want me to, I mean.”

Taeyong rolls his chair out of the cubicle, onto the little hallway between the white walled spaces, and looks to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the end of it. Right, _yeah_ , Johnny could’ve done that too before leaving.

Taeyong’s ears flatten and he pulls a grimace at the floods of water pouring down the sides of the building, and Johnny silently agrees.

“That’s really nice of you Johnny, but I’ve still got to finish the report sheet for Doyoung and I don't want to keep you waiting–“ Taeyong looks up at Johnny from his chair, walking his feet back into his space, to his table.

Doyoung is the general manager of the marketing team, and there is only one type of due files they have to hand in to him. Other than the paper Taeyong should have handed in this morning. Johnny knows that, because coincidentally, he and Taeyong have the same duties in that regard.

“And if you missed this morning’s one, isn’t that one due for for the Marketing strategy meetings?” He asks, tapping a finger on top of the computer.

Taeyong’s eyebrows pull together and his ears twitch forward, rustling the feathered black strands of hair across his forehead. “Yeah?”

Johnny sighs a little in exasperation at Taeyong’s insistence. “That’s due end the of the week, then.”

“Yeah. I know. But I like to get a headstart on things,” Taeyong responds, hand poised on his laptop mouse as he stares up at Johnny with a mixture of a deadpan and confused expression.

Johnny huffs out an amused snort, shaking his head. 

“You've got your head start already, Taeyong. Finish it tomorrow and you’ll still be ahead of time,” Johnny taps his fingers on the top of Taeyong’s computer again, this time in impatience, and watches Taeyong think.

He adds a little encouragement before Taeyong come to decide against it. Faintly, he recalls that cat-hybrids commonly have a distaste for getting wet, and because Taeyong’s denial is most likely just a facade of forceful humility, he pushes on.

“Come on, I’d sleep better knowing you made it home on time for once and didn’t get robbed on public transport past midnight.”

“I can fend for myself Johnny,” Taeyong responds as if on command, ears pushing backward. Johnny sighs again at Taeyong’s knee-jerk response of being fine on his own when it’s just plain old hospitality and cordialities. 

“I didn't say you couldn’t. I’m offering to take you home without any ulterior motive besides making sure you get home well. For _myself_ , because I don’t know about you, but I’d feel bad making a fr–“ he stops himself before Taeyong’s ears can flatten. He doubts Taeyong counts himself as Johnny’s friend yet.

“—A _colleague_ walk home when I could’ve helped them with no problem.”

Taeyong’s eyes fix on him for a moment, and Johnny pulls his eyebrows up in response, waiting for an answer.

It comes in form of Taeyong sighing, deflating with a murmured _fine_ , and beginning to save the files on his computer.

“Great!” Johnny says, smacking his hand on top of Taeyong’s computer a tad too harshly. He winces at the sharp glare Taeyong throws his way, ears flat, Johnny lifting his hands in apology.  
  


Within minutes, Taeyong has his computer shut down, and gathers his things to follow Johnny to the elevator. Since eight p.m. is the second time the most people get off of work, the elevator is decently crowded, and for the twentieth time that week alone, Johnny finds himself hating how slow the elevator is.

Worse, when they stop at the finances floor, and ten people at once try to get in. It’s uncomfortably crowded, but the good thing is that it pushes Johnny and Taeyong together as they shuffle to the side of the elevator to acommodate the influx of people.

A particularly forceful jostle of someone trying to get their brief-bag past Johnny’s knees, sends Johnny cursing sharply, quietly. He barely manages to catch himself with an arm against the wall of the elevator, and the motion creates a little space around Taeyong, caged in by Johnny.

“Sorry,” Johnny winces but Taeyong shakes his head in response as not to worry.

“Happens,” he says, eyes darting away from underneath his fringe, ears flushed. His shoulders shake on a shuddery inhale, tail hitting against Johnny’s leg once.

Johnny has to lean in once, just to get some give on his arm to leverage himself back up, and it pushes the tip of Taeyong’s ear across his neck, once, before he’s up and standing straight again.

The next time their eyes meet, Taeyong’s flick away instantly, and theres a high flush on his cheeks. Johnny wishes he could understand if that was a good thing, or Taeyong wishing himself out of a situation again.

Admittedly, Johnny feels a little bad. He knows he couldn't have caught himself anywhere else, but it’s so easy to overwhelm Taeyong, even when Johnny’s just trying to make small steps. 

  
His thoughts are interrupted as the elevator slows to a halt, and multiple people at once try to get out before the doors are fully opened. Johnny, still kind of shielding Taeyong in the corner, gets pushed again, and Taeyong yelps.  
It’s a pitiful sound, one that makes Johnny immediately see red for a moment, trying to understand what could’ve happened to make Taeyong sound so pained.

Taeyong pulls a hand against his tail, removing it from where it swished past Johnny’s legs, gathering it against his body.  
Johnny catches the eyes of the same guy with the heavy-ass brief bag as he exits the elevator, looking back at Taeyong without much guilt. Takes a second to connect the dots, but then he understands that he himself didn’t hurt Taeyong like he’d thought first, but that the guy most likely caught Taeyong’s tail between the wall and his brief bag.

“You okay?” Johnny asks, trying to get a look at Taeyong’s face. The other man nods in an aborted motion. A pang sounds through Johnny’s chest at the wide, watery eyes turning toward him.

“Yeah. It’ll go away quickly. Just surprised,” Taeyong holds on to his tail tighter.   
  
Johnny shakes his head, anger brimming under his skin. “Fucking prick.” He says between teeth, low enough for only him and Taeyong to hear.

Taeyong’s nervousness is palpable as they’re in the car together, and Johnny feels a little bad for the kitten on his passenger seat. He himself hasn’t ever in his life struggled with social awkwardness, but it’s pretty clear that Taeyong does. He keeps breathing in a funny pattern, chest and shoulders shuddering on exhales.  
Hoping some white noise helps him calm down, Johnny turns on the radio to a low noise, and begins chattering away about work. 

Absolutely shallow topics is what he talks about; gossip about their coworkers Yuta and Sicheng, who definitely are having an affair because their frequent breaks in the photocopy-room have long gone from inconspicuous to blatantly obvious. The weather, which _has_ been crazy, Taeyong admits to that, too. Their current lunch options, too, on which Taeyong doesnt have much opinions because he mostly brings his own lunches. Every other little hunger is bridged over by the cream puff pastries from the vending machine.

Taeyong doesnt say much, but he really doesnt have to.  
  
Johnny talks enough for the both of them, phrasing questions so Taeyong could easily answer them with short answers if he so desired to.

Every now and then, Johnny tries to gauge Taeyong’s state of mind by his tail, which had at the beginning of the drive thunked against the inside of the door in an unsteady rythm. Taeyong had apologized, but Johnny assured him he hadn’t even noticed (which was a lie, but if Taeyong really thought his tail kept getting him in sandtraps, Johnny will do his damndest to spin any lie that’ll keep Taeyong from hiding it under his clothing again).

He makes the music a little louder so the thumping of Taeyong’s tail isn't as apparent, and Taeyong recognizes the gesture kindly, dipping his head in an embarrassed motion.

Between strings of monologue, Taeyong interrupts Johnny’s talking to politely instruct him on directions to drive, before nodding him to keep on.

By the fourth red light, Taeyong’s tail has slowed from the anxious sideways beating, to lazy curls of the tip across Taeyong’s knees. It moves in slow, serpentine movements, and Johnny thinks that the fur looks really healthy. Black, but reflecting the shiny lights of the city despite the color. Or the lack of it.

“Johnny- the stoplight,” Taeyong says, and Johnny’s jerked out of his reverie of looking at Taeyong’s tail. He spurs in jerking the gearshift a little to jerkily, and Taeyong makes an unpretty snort as Johnny’s car chokes out with a sputtering noise.

“Oops,” Johnny laughs, raising a hand to excuse himself to the driver behind him about his lenience, “sorry about that.”

“Don't worry, happens to me multiple times every time I drive,” Taeyong says, and Johnny’s eyebrows jump up at the admission.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, especially when starting on a hill. Turn right at the next stoplight,” Taeyong admits, continuing right on. “And in traffic, especially the morning ones. And then everybody honks you out because you’re taking three seconds too long and everyone's worrying about getting to work.”

Johnny soaks up everything Taeyong reveals about himself like a sponge. The willing reveal of information is so seldom that it feels like a rush to the head every time Taeyong says more than ten words in a row.

“Three seconds does make a pretty grand impact on someone’s work commute,” Johnny jokes, “thought you’d be the one to understand some people’s need to be on time.”

That actually gets a laugh out of Taeyong.

Two months ago this probably wouldnt even have happened, resulting, Johnny has a feeling that Taeyong’s trust grows slowly, but steeply.  
  


Their talk gets a little more interactive, but it’s not long before Taeyong instructs him to stop at the end of the street they’re on.

Johnny parks the car along the curb, leaning forward to get a look at the tall apartment building and streetname. It’s difficult making it out at first due to the late time, but when it comes clear, he recognizes it immediately.  
  


Taeyong has his hand on the door handle already, when Johnny begins speaking, interrupting his motion of getting out.

“Hey, Taeyong, wait-” he says, nerves a little jittery all of a sudden. “If you want, I could easily pick you up for work tomorrow, too. This is literally a two minute way off off my usual route-“

Taeyong doesn't answer immediately, hand twitching around the doorhandle. Across the seatcover, his tail swishes, curling up at the side of his thigh.

Pulling their tail into personal space meant what- hesitation? Johnny doesn’t remember, and once again Johnny underlines his mental reminder to look up what those signals means.

Sensing his hesitancy, Johnny butts in.

“Look, this really wouldn't be an inconvenience for me at all, I drive to work everyday. Despite you always working late, I know we’ve got the same office hours and that’s why I’m offering—”

Taeyong’s ears stand up and his head dips down once, before his eyes lift to Johnny’s again. He nods hesitantly.

“That would be great, actually.” He says, and lights bounce off the little peak of his canines as he smiles tentatively.

Johnny exhales a little nervous laughter, and returns the smile.

“Yeah, no prob, just let me give you my number so I can text you when I'm there tomorrow.”

Taeyong digs his phone out of his pantpocket with a lift of his butt that makes his tail beat once a little funnily. It’s _cute,_ and Johnny’s still got a somewhat stupid smile on his face as Taeyong looks at him in question, raising his eyebrows as he waits for Johnny to start dictating his number.

“ _Oh_! Sorry-,”

Johnny startles only a very little. As he rattles down his number he wonders if he’ll get immune to how often he puts his foot in his own mouth around Taeyong. He doesn’t think he’s very subtle about his fascination with Taeyong, but by Ten’s words, Taeyong is pretty dense regarding anything other than what marketing model goes with what sales equation best.

Ten claims that it’s also the reason Taeyong is past twenty-five and still single, but Johnny’s seen weird marks around his neck once, so he’s still unsure. He won’t make a move until he knows Taeyong is single.

He also won’t make a move because then his crush would be officially out, and according to Jaehyun the no-dating policy has had people afraid for their life before.

He knows of exceptions, but he won’t risk anything so early in his employment there. Jaehyun’s words about Taeyong’s work ethic and need to please repeat in his head.

Unhappily so, Johnny knows Jaehyun is right. If there’s one person in the world that won’t risk their career over personal pleasure, it’s Lee Taeyong.   
  


Johnny returns Taeyong’s goodbye, waving away his spout of thanks at the nice gesture of driving Taeyong home, and he waits until the catboy is at the building’s door. Then, he rolls his window down. 

“Hey, Taeyong,” he calls. Taeyong halts in pulling the door open, the end of his tail doing a particularly high twitch as he turns around, toward the sound. His eyebrows are raised in question, probably expecting some other important news, a reminder, or that he forgot something in the car. Johnny almost feels bad for what’s about to come.  
  


“Text me when you get home!”  
  


He enjoys Taeyong’s confused pull of eyebrows and tilt of ears, before recognition settles, and Taeyong sighs visibly, rolling his eyes in exasperation as he enters the building. Johnny chuckles to himself as he rolls the window back up, revving the engine.

Johnny’s turning the street corner when his phone pings with a message, lighting up the interior of his car with blueish light. Johnny sneaks a glance before turning into traffic, and snorts in amusement.  
  


[unknown number]: not sure if you were serious but i made it to my apartment. Thanks again for bringing me home 

[unknown number]: you better be here on time tomorrow! I dont even have three seconds to spare

“Cute.” He says out loud, to no one in particular, just because now he can actually say it. He wouldn’t do so to Taeyong face, even if he violently thinks it a lot of times during the day.

He doesn't answer yet, because he’s a responsible driver, and switches the bright screen off. The fact that Taeyong still complied, reluctantly, is so endearing to Johnny it makes his jaw ache with the stupid dopey smile on his face that won’t go. 

“ _Cute_ ,” he murmurs again, making mental note to text Taeyong something polite but inconsequential back. 


	2. softer edges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We progress downward in Johnny’s infatuation

If someone were to ask Johnny, he’d confidently say that the decision to offer Taeyong rides to work was the best Johnny had ever made in his life. In reality, it most likely is not the best, but to Johnny, brain wrought in infatuation, it really does feel like it at moments.

It’s the best decision he’s made in the endeavor of making Taeyong’s walls crumble down, at least. Every day, every conversation on their shared way to work, every smile exchanged, feels like another step in the right direction; like another brick taken off of the top of a rapidly decreasing wall.

Over the weeks following the arrangement, they fall into an unspoken routine so easily that Johnny would be frightened if he wasn’t busy being so delighted over it. 

Five times a week, he pulls along the curb in front of Taeyong’s apartment building, and Taeyong will slide onto the passenger seat with an ease that becomes more steady each day.

To pop the bubble, though, of course there was the day Taeyong informed him that his car was fixed again, and that he was very thankful but that Johnny had went out of his way for him enough. 

Johnny had been a little stumped, having blissfully managed to forget that this was a very short-lived arrangement, and waved Taeyong’s continuous thanks away. That was on a Friday’s drive home, and it was already chilly enough for Taeyong wear those thick-knitted cardigans.

“Sure. Yeah, no problem,” Johnny had said, smiling amicably but feeling like the opposite as Taeyong thanked him again, smile a little weird, and shut the car door. Johnny waited until the apartment door was closed behind the kitten- each time a little baited breath held, thinking that this would be the time Taeyong’s tail caught between door and frame. 

He thought things over on the drive home, and then some as he made a flavorless package of ramen. _Too much water,_ he bemoans, thinking it was impossible that he still messed up instant noodles after all his years in college.

He’d thought about it for another two hours while watching a cheesy romance flick, too. It took some muscular, chiseled-jaw hollywood-starlet kissing the wild, sexy cat-hybrid lady and an uncomfortably close-up shot of his tongue curling around a set of fangs much sharper than Taeyong's, for Johnny to swipe open his phone and open it to Taeyong's chat window.

[me / 10:11PM]: hey about the driving situation. I really don’t mind making it a steady arrangement, since you said you hate driving in the city traffic and i dont n it’s really no difference in my day to leave my home two minutes earlier than usual 

[me / 10:11PM]: if you want to! just a proposition and making clear i really dont mind

He lays his phone down with a jerky kind of motion, nervous and kind of regretting it the moment he’s sent the texts. He doesn’t think Taeyong would answer so late, so he rewinds the few scenes he’s missed- mainly a heady makeout scene- when his phone vibrates against his chest. The display shows the name Johnny had indulgently saved Taeyong under. Taeyong doesn’t need to know what it is.

[Tyong ^x^ / 10:12PM]: ah if you really dont mind... I was thinking the same thing already to be honest

[Tyong ^x^ / 10:12PM]: i’d really like that, Johnny!

[Tyong ^x^ / 10:13PM]: my work sleep balance actually had been a dream lately

[me / 10:14PM ]: i twnd to have that effect on people’s lives

[Tyong ^x^ / 10:15PM]: ? An increase of REM sleep?

[me / 10:15PM]: *improving the general quality of it

  
  


Johnny can’t wipe the smile off of his lips as Taeyong and he continue texting some, mostly about nonsense topics. The smile stays, and it’s right back in place as Taeyong is already waiting on the curb on monday morning, slipping on the passenger's seat like it’s second nature by now.

“Morning, Johnny,” Taeyong says as he slams the door closed, bright white smile and fangs out. 

Johnny can’t help but laugh at the bounced-off happy energy, smile just as wide, if not wider. “Morning, Taeyong.”

  
  


But even if he’s softer, it’s still Taeyong. True to himself, there’s the debate about gas money. Over weeks, Johnny has to fend off more than twenty ways Taeyong had tried slipping him money. No matter if it was a twenty dollar bill slid underneath their two desktops without a word said, or a fifty handed to him as he put down Taeyong’s coffee silently- Taeyong’s eyebrows furrowed, determined, and so out of context in the situation.

Johnny pushed his hand down insistently, tutting, and did the same thing the day afterward when it’s a tenner in its place. The fact that the two-minute derive from his usual way to work did not alter Johnny's usage of gas did not seem to fit in the kitten’s head, and he says as much.

He had put the milky coffee down on Taeyong’s table, next to the packed lunches he was already digging in to. It’s in tupperware, so Johnny guessed it must be home-made, and that was when a little idea set off a lightbulb above his head.

In the end, he manages to convince Taeyong to just repay him with the occasional packed lunch if he _really_ needed to repay him, since the beginning Taeyong’s occasional lunches he had brought on his own had made Johnny’s mouth water in jealousy over the delicious meals. With Johnny’s idea, the little extra gas money that went spent on doing the little excursion to Taeyong’s place, would be saved by Johnny not spending his own on the convenient fast-food place around the corner Mark always tried to drag him out to.

It’s a happy little compromise, one that Taeyong admits he’s thankful for, because he doesn’t mind it at all. On the opposite, actually, as it makes him pick up his love for making food again, which had gone a little lost somewhere in the last years. 

Since his ride home (Johnny) doesn’t stay at the company past midnight, and it’s not just himself he cooks for anymore, Taeyong has taken it up again to re-sharpen his culinary skills. Something he had loved to do with his mother, and back with his roommates in college, but mainly stopped in the last years of living alone, Taeyong had told him on a prior car-ride home.

‘It’s no fun to cook when you’ve got no one to share the meals with,’ he says when Johnny inquires about why he had largely given up on it.

Coming full circle to this being the best decision of his life, because now he gets the most delicious home cooked meals multiple times a week, and spends more time than ever with Taeyong. 

“ _God_ , this is a dream,” Johnny moans, reclining in his office chair and kicking his feet up on Taeyong’s table. He’s rolled over to Taeyong’s side of the cubicle as Taeyong only had one container with cucumber salad and it was easier to share it between the two of them, than it was to slide it between the array of cables and potted plants below their desktops. 

“ _You’re_ a dream,” he adds, because _yes Taeyong does the cooking, yes he does the cleaning_ as Donghyuck had cackled after some days of watching this funny little lunch-date thing him and Taeyong do. Johnny had sent him a scolding gaze, which had surprisingly worked, as Donghyuck had shrunk below the white cubicle wall immediately after. Still, even if it was meant as a verbal jab, something about it sticks. Because with every passing day there are things revealed about Taeyong, things that make Johnny think that he’d give an arm and a leg to put a ring on him, as stupid and juvenile as that thought sounds. This spinach casserole, for example.

Despite their increasing closeness, calling Taeyong a dream is kind of an uninhibited thing to say, and he momentarily halts in chewing as he waits to judge Taeyong’s reaction.

“Thank you,” Taeyong says, responding but not commenting as he shoves Johnny’s feet down off of his table. His left ear does a funny little twitch. There’s the tiniest little smile around his lips though, a pleased curl of the corner of his mouth.

That’s a thing that has been happening a lot more, too. The smiles. Private ones, annoyed ones when Johnny and Donghyuck bounce off stupid insults, bright ones, too. Those are directed at him, mostly, and they send pangs of emotions he can’t name through Johnny each time he’s at the receiving end of one. Whatever it is, Johnny can’t get enough of looking at Taeyong, no matter what he does.

There’s a palpable shift in Taeyong, Johnny admits. To the softer realm, perhaps. In the sense of his walls of cold, hard glances and icy-smooth exterior, only focused on work and little else, having melted away little by little. Softer, in the sense of receiving and giving. Gentler.

And other people have caught on to it, too, it seems.  
  


Example in point, as on a particularly bright autumn morning, Donghyuck leans over the thin drywall of the cubicle, whispering _what the hell is wrong with Taeyong,_ who is actually humming lowly as he works on the financial reports Doyoung had urged him to finish. Fangs kneading through his pretty lower lip as he works, focused.

Looking up at Donghyuck, Johnny shrugs, because he actually doesn't know what’s gotten Taeyong in a good mood today, but he won’t complain. At all. 

It had been like this the entire day already, thinking about it. During their morning car ride Taeyong’s tail had flicked across the center console to Johnny’s side happily, and curled around Johnny’s leg on the crowded elevator ride up. Which— That, too, has been a thing that had been happening much more lately, Taeyong’s tail seeking contact. Johnny thinks he could die each time he feels the soft fur of it touching against him, tentatively, softly.

He hasn’t yet managed to bridge his hesitancy to just touch it. He _wants_ to, that’s for sure, but he feels as if he shouldn’t.

He had asked Taeyong once, not because he minded, but because sometimes it felt so subconscious when Taeyong’s tail swishes against his leg while Taeyong himself doesn’t even look; he wondered if Taeyong even meant to do it. Taeyong had laughed nervously, scratching his floppy ear, and described it as an affiliative behavior. Had said that a cat’s tail touching you just meant that they liked you, and that it could be understood like someone smiling at you across the room.

Of course, that did not send Johnny in an emotional frenzy. Not in the least. He only immediately pulled an unimpressed Jaehyun aside to vent to. 

“Donghyuck.” Taeyong says suddenly, humming stopped. He’s dry in his scolding, tone flat, as he still doesn't look away from his screen.

Donghyuck’s eyes widen, obviously assuming Taeyong would be undistracteable as ever from his work, and would either not notice him hanging over the wall, or choose to ignore it as always.

But Donghyuck wouldn't be Donghyuck if he didn't adapt to come out on top of situations the second they’re thrown at him.

“ _My,”_ he drawls, “what big ears you have.”

“Mh,” Taeyong growls back jokingly, averting his gaze from his screen to look at Donghyuck with drawn-together eyebrows. Johnny and Donghyuck both laugh in surprise at his next words, too. “All the better to hear you talk shit with.”

Johnny takes the freedom of interpretation to pinpoint Taeyong’s increase of liveliness on to Johnny’s unwavering denial of letting the kitten stay past ten in the evening. It’s got to be the actual rest Taeyong is getting that makes him this vibrant, happier. Gone are the ever-present bags under Taeyong’s eyes, and the days where Taeyong stares into the shiny walls of their painfully slow elevator looking like death warmed over.

There are other things in their weird little arrangement, too, but the most prevalent feeling it evokes in Johnny is an open, gaping cave of domesticity. Like a giant maw, one that wants more with every gesture they exchange, every gaze Taeyong hold for more than two seconds, every reaction Johnny can elicit out of the kitten— thinking just how easy it feels to be with Taeyong.

When they both work late, trying to get overdue reports done, Johnny takes it upon himself to be the coffee-boy, making trips to and from the coffee machine every couple of hours. He doesn’t have that much of an attention span anyways, whereas Taeyong, once starting a new project, bites into it heavily, barely letting off of it until it’s done.

It’s the little breaks where he re-tanks, sometimes chatting with Lucas when he passes him off at the right time and he’s for once not mooning after their intern, or he prints some copies with Jungwoo from a few rows down, waiting as their slow coffee machine drips through two full cups of coffee. Jaehyun is always open to getting distracted from work, and most of the times it’s Jaehyun that follows him to the breakroom, and then voices his regrets loudly every time Johnny just waxes on and about Taeyong while emptying nearly half a milk-carton in the cups.  
  


Taeyong likes his coffee sweet, with lots of cream, and the happy eye-smile he gets in return for adding heavy cream makes Johnny’s heart just happily chant _more, more, more_ — or cute. Usually it’s one of those two. And it makes Johnny think he’s anything but hardened to the wiles of a catboy. One in the league of Taeyong, at least. 

  
  
  


(^・x・^)

  
  


Another thing Johnny thought he wasn't, is stupid. A bit dense, maybe, but that doesn't explain how it _completely_ slipped his mind that yes, hybrids go into heat, but that also includes Taeyong, too.  
  


He gets smacked by his ignorance like a brick to the face, before it’s even eight in the morning.

Because, well, the reminder of it is pretty unmistakable in the form of a flushed, barely clothed Taeyong opening the door to his apartment. 

Johnny’s hand hovers in front of the doorbell he just pressed, still- wide eyes immediately latching on to the sight of Taeyong’s bare legs.   
  


After multiple weeks of Taeyong standing down at the curb, already waiting, or bustling out of the building door within two minutes of Johnny texting him that he’s there, today’s morning had been worrisome. 

Johnny had glanced at his clock twelve times. They had had another seven minutes before it would be cutting it really close to arriving late, and that was very unlikely assuming that they would be on time already. On a whim, sure in his assumption that Taeyong must have overslept, he’d slipped inside the apartment building door when the next person exited, and made his way up to Taeyong’s door.  
  


Now, he stares at Taeyong’s disheveled appearance, definitely leading his brain on and _yet_ – yet, somehow, he knows that Taeyong did not oversleep.

He’s got shorts on, but they're barely visible under the hem of the same giant sweater Johnny recognizes from the last time Taeyong was sick— _in heat._ It’s a painfully slow progress, but finally the dots connect. The sweaty skin, flushed cheeks, glassy eyes. He’s already seen Taeyong in heat once before. 

“Oh, you-,” Johnny garbles on how to say this. “You don't look so good.”

“No. Don’t feel like it either,” Taeyong says after his expression schools from surprise, voice shaky, hand tightening around the edge of the doorframe. “Sorry, I completely forgot to text you– I, I got kind of surprised by this,–”

He gestures down at himself self-explanatorily. Johnny swallows drily, and nods. 

“H-heat, right?” The words feel awkward in his mouth. He’s never talked about heat openly with somebody, mainly because he’s never been close with a hybrid before, but also because you don't go around and ask strangers about how they like to spend their heats. Taeyong’s tail flicks with an anxious tempo akin to the kind of an old washing machine drum.

“Yeah- _that._ That’s right,” he shifts on his legs, pulling a shaky finger across his forehead to de-stick sweaty strands. Some remain, dangling into his eyes, and Johnny clenches his hand. “Can you excuse me at work?”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Johnny answers, viciously trying to keep his eyes from glancing down at Taeyong’s thighs. _Manners,_ he chants in his head. _Your mom raised you to be a gentleman, Johnny Seo._

“Okay, um- good luck?” Johnny winces, feeling like smashing his head into the drywall next to the door as soon as the words have left his mouth. “I’ll leave you to it?”

A little relief to his urge to shatter his skull is Taeyong’s equally palpable awkwardness, his tail beating from side to side steadily as his eyes bounce everywhere that’s not Johnny’s eyes.

“Uh, thank you. I’ll-... definitely need that.”

There’s a lapse of silence, Taeyong’s socks shifting on the floor, thighs pressing together. 

Suddenly, Taeyong’s tail ticks up, and he says an already fading _wait right there_ , as he vanishes inside his apartment quickly. The door remains open, and naturally Johnny’s gaze falls to the inside of it. 

The living room, as it looks like by the two adjacent couches and Tv. His eyes bounce all over the place, trying to get as much insights on Taeyong’s life as possible. The stack of books on the tv-table, the wide array of jackets in the little hallway, framed pictures of a little dog.

There’s a whole heap of blankets on the couch, more than Johnny can count on first glance. An image pops up in his mind, one of a sleepy, exhausted Taeyong curling himself into the sea of blankets after Johnny drops him off at his home. Johnny sighs dreamily.

Then, Taeyong’s shock of black hair and rosy insides of his ears pop back into his vision. Held out are two tupperware containers, one smaller than the other. “I made this yesterday, before I–,” he stops, uncertainly. Johnny can imagine how that sentence would have ended. “No use in wasting it, right?”

“Oh!” Johnny takes the food, bowing a little in thanks. “Thank you so much,” he says, already looking forward to his lunch break, even though Taeyong won’t be there. “Maybe it’ll manage to tie me over your severely missed presence.”

The joke falls flat as Taeyong shows little reaction except a shuddery inhale. Oh well, Johnny thinks, sympathizing as much as he can, he must be feeling awful.

“Okay, if you’re sure there's nothing I can do, I’m just gonna–” Johnny vaguely points to the direction of the downward staircase. He kind of wants to flee before he’ll do or say something stupid. Like offer to help Taeyong through his heat from the true, kind bottom of his heart, without any own ulterior motives in mind. He nods again, an aborted little bow, and turns to take the first steps.

“Actually, Johnny,-“ Taeyong’s voice sounds, and it’s got to be real embarrassing how fast his head snaps back toward the kitten, standing in his door. Looking forlorn in the big, huge sweater. “If you really meant it, there’s something you could do-,”

“Yeah, _absolutely_ —” Johnny’s already said before Taeyong’s even finished. It makes Taeyong’s fangs flash in a quick embarrassed smile, and Johnny grimaces, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. 

“Can I have- um. Can you leave something of yours here?” Taeyong stutters, ears flicking through the sweaty mess of his hair in agitation, and Johnny turns on his heel immediately to turn toward Taeyong fully again. Taeyong looks miserable, eyes big.

“Not in a weird way, it’s just—,” Taeyong’s hands tighten around the bottom of his sweater, bunching it up. “Scent of… another person h-helps with it. Sometimes. Ten told me.”

He looks so uncertain, tail anxiously hitting against the doorframe with such force Johnny knows it must hurt. He doesn't want Taeyong to feel as bad as he obviously does, and he’s thinking that Taeyong doesn’t need to explain himself. That if Johnny can do anything to help lessen the pain, he’ll do it gladly. Anything to help make his—

“Poor kitty,” he’s coo’ed, before he realizes that he definitely did not meant to say that out loud.

Taeyong’s eyes are as big as table tennis-balls. His tail is held in non-motion, frozen somewhere in a half-flick upward. His hands turn white-knuckled around the bottom of his sweater.

Johnny scrambles to put his words back in his mouth, seriously contemplating to bury his head in the drywall now. “ _Sorry,—_ that sounded asshole-ish. I should’ve asked- I don't mean that you’re just a kitty, like, I know you’re a human, too–,”

“Johnny,” Taeyong interrupts, voice weirdly garbly with resonance. His tail resumes motion, flicking from side to side, slower than before. “It’s- fine. I don’t- I don’t mind.”

“Uh,” Johnny stutters, brain hooking on to the fact that the low resonance sound continues a weird second until after Taeyong stops speaking. “Yeah, okay. Wait.”

He slips out of his coat, slinging it over the close handrail of the staircase, depositing the tupperware on the nearest step. He pulls off his soft-knit sweater in an aborted motion, pulling his thin white t-shirt down quickly after he’s got his head freed. He knows it definitely slipped up to almost his chest, and his hair must be messed up too- he pulls his fingers through it a little bashfully. 

“Pays off that I’m so shoddy. Take that, I still got the one’s from the cleaners on the backseat,” he says, as an explanation, but also to bridge over the stunned silence from Taeyong. Taeyong had complained about the cleaners-package still sitting in the back just a few days ago.

Taeyong’s legs shift again, and Johnny does _not_ stare at the pretty thighs on display. 

The sweater is held between them for a stretching moment, arm extended in what becomes increasingly awkward. Taeyong’s eyes are as big as they could possibly big, dipping quickly between Johnny’s face and the sweater. His lip trembles, fingers tightening—

“Oh! _Uh,_ um,-”

Johnny jerks a little in surprise. He doesn't really know how to react when the first thing Taeyong does is to plunk his face into the fabric he held out, inhaling deeply. 

His tail begins flicking upward in a higher tick Johnny’s ever seen before, the weird noise returns, and Johnny’s brain does a record scratching to a halt-moment. 

_Oh,_ he realizes, thought as encompassing to his brain as if someone hit twelve hi-hats and cymbals at once. _That’s a purr._

Taeyong’s _purring,_ a rumbly subwoofer of a sound coming up somewhere in his chest. Why did he not know that? Johnny wonders. He guesses it only makes sense that they would be able to, but he did not ever know that cat hybrids purr. 

Like someone yanked on his tail heftily, Taeyong right himself up again with a jerk, taking the crumpled garment and holding it to his chest. If the blush before was strong, this one’s furious. 

Glassy eyes blink up at him, lips pressed together tightly. Taeyong doesn’t say anything, but his frame seems to shrink in a shameful response to the knee-jerk reaction, probably expecting a reaction of disgust at the truly animalistic behavior. It's not that it’s animalistic in an unhinged sort of way, Johnny thinks, just more cat than human for a second right there. 

For a moment, they just stare at each other in shocked silence. Taeyong at his own reaction, Johnny still caught up on the fact that Taeyong can _purr_.

Taeyong’s left ear flips around a few times, arms tightening around Johnny’s sweater in his arms. His tail curls around his own ankle.

 _Cute!—_ Johnny’s brain screams in alarm, repeating like a new-world siren. _Cute Cute Cute Cute—_

Johnny, for once being able to read the room and sensing that even if a joke would momentarily lift the suffocating awkwardness, it would do more harm than good right now, and wisely decides against doing any of the sort.

“Uh. Anything else I can do to help? Should I send Ten over later or something?”

Taeyong’s ramrod-straight tail and back relax a breath’s length after no other words follow and Johnny's schools his face to be nothing but open and understanding. Even if he feels like clawing his eyes out, he recognizes the situation must be even more uncomfortable for Taeyong.

“No,” Taeyong answers through a choked noise. His tail curls around his own bared leg, “this- this will do, thank you. Johnny.”

His head ducks down in bashful embarrassment, unable to look into Johnny’s eyes, but his ears remain tilted toward Johnny, so he must feel somewhat okay. At least not intimidated by him, he hopes.

“Okay,” Johnny says softly, stepping back to grab his coat. He feels as if he has to rip himself away from the sight of Taeyong, and tamper down the primal need he’s got to stay and take care of Taeyong in any way he wants or needs. Cut him up fruit, let him have one sweater after another if it’s really scent that helps. Let him have the real thing, too, let Taeyong pull him into a hug and bury his face in Johnny’s chest as long as he wants too.

But he’s got three projects on his desk that need to be finished and on Doyoung’s desk by tomorrow.

“Thank you, Johnny.” Taeyong murmurs again, arms tight around the bunched sweater. His tail resumes lazy flicks of the tip into half-mooned shapes, and he gives a shy smile back to Johnny’s one. It’s a little heart-wrenching, to be the one to pop the bubble of a private moment.

“Text me if you need anything, okay? When you’re feeling better, too, actually. Yeah?” 

Taeyong nods.

With those words, Johnny physically strains his eyes to pull away from the sight of Taeyong, and after grabbing the tupperware, he begins making his way down the first steps in a weird crab-like walk of not turning away fully from Taeyong.

He waves awkwardly.

“Sorry for making you late to work, Johnny,” Taeyong adds, fingers wiggling in a wave while he’s still holding on to the sweater like it could jump out of his arms any moment. Johnny almost trips over a step with how much his eyes push closed with his smile. Taeyong’s tone of voice is so cute when he says his name, and Johnny misses him saying it already when he’s reached the bottom of the internal staircase.

(^・x・^)

  
  


At work, Johnny has little choice but focusing on his due papers and financial reports. But even with his favorite distraction gone from his periphery, he’s struggling to focus for more than half an hour at a time. He taps his pen against the ceramic of Taeyong’s plant-watering cup, already emptied into the cacti-pots in his last bout of boredom, while his eyes scan his excel sheet.

Somebody walks past him briskly, and only in the periphery he recognizes it as Ten by the elongated shape of a tail trailing behind him.

There’s a little lurch in Tens walk, as he stops suddenly mid-step, jerking back to look at Johnny.

Johnny lifts his gaze from his computer at the movement. Ten stands next to him, still, unmoving. Eyebrows furrowed.

“Morning?” Johnny says, unsure what to make of Ten’s behavior.

  
“Morning.” Ten returns, eyes narrowed, scrutinizing. His sharp eyes travel over Johnny with an intensity as if he’s looking for a single hair on his shirt. The catboy leans closer. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“Uh,” Johnny is stumped. He has no idea what Ten wants to hear from him, but his scrutinizing gaze continues making him more uncomfortable with every passing second.

 _‘Don't try to understand the cats,’_ Donghyuck’s voice echoes in his head, resonating with Johnny's current confusion.

“Is this about Taeyong?” He questions and Ten’s head tilts sideways, hand resting on his hip. Something clicks. He doubts Taeyong texted Ten, but Taeyong’s empty seat is pretty unmissable. If anyone would know about what's wrong with Taeyong, it would be either Ten or Johnny. If Ten doesn’t know why Taeyong’s home, of course he’d ask Johnny.

But Taeyong’s heat isn't a matter all the near coworkers need to know. Johnny doubts there’s a time Donghyuck isn’t listening in.

“I don't think i should say this out lo-“

“Out with it, Seo,” Ten interrupts, urging, a little meanly. Johnny's eyebrows pinch up, and he holds Ten’s expectant gaze for a second, before giving in.

“Taeyong’s in he-“

“In heat. Yeah, I can tell. Anything else in that realm?”

“Uh, no?” 

“Nothing that would… perhaps threaten your position in this department if I were to tell Kun?”

To say Johnny is absolutely out of the loop were an understatement. “What?” He returns, in disbelief. “Are you threatening me?”

Ten’s eyebrow ticks upward, but Johnny’s confusion is bigger than Ten’s intimation techniques in the moment. Yeah, he’s in love with his coworker, but they’re not in a relationship. Is he getting the assassination target on him because he thinks Taeyong is cute?

“Why are you threatening me, I’m literally just doing my finances account?”

“And that’s all you’re _doing?_ Even in your freetime- no,... other commitments?”

Johnny gives up trying to understand what Ten’s getting at. “Pretty much, yeah? It’s actually been really time-consuming.”

Ten’s stare remains unwavering. His nose twitches, and his tail flicks in slow curls of the tip. Whereas it’s endearing when Taeyong does it, with Ten Johnny feels like prey cornered by a tiger with a preference for playing with his food by humiliating it.

He clears his throat, once, throwing a pointed gaze to his report pulled up on the screen. The one that’s due in less than three hours.

Ten concedes, and with one last cold narrow of his eyes, he resumes his walk to wherever he had planned before.

(^・x・^)

  
  


[Tyong ^x^ / 8:34PM]: Hey Johnny, can you water my plants tomorrow?

[Tyong ^x^ / 8:35PM]: you told me to text someone last time you better not refuse

[Me / 8:37PM]: already done that today. Dont even think about coming to the office in the middle of the night to make a check of it

[Tyong ^x^ / 8:42PM]: of course not mr. seo

[Tyong ^x^ / 8:52PM]: thanks Johnny you’re the best

(^・x・^)

  
  


Johnny just finds Taeyong so devastatingly cute. He’s so stoic in his work, this slender little person, unbent by any things life had thrown his way.

He’s so endearing in his mannerisms that sometimes it gets really hard to focus on the city’s traffic sometimes when Johnny drives them to work. Most times.

Johnny doesn’t know how he managed to breach the topic without Taeyong shutting down, but like hell he won’t use the situation to his best abilities. Some mention about another rumoured workplace affair, a comment about what Ten had hinted at with Taeyong being single, and a question of Taeyong’s one person apartment, and he had Taeyong talking about why he’s never been interested in a relationship.

“Ah, I guess I got just nothing to show for myself. I work and when I’m done with that I just cook and watch tv and sleep. I don’t— I don’t know, I just work, wouldn’t be much time for a partner anyway,” he trails off, gaze turning toward the passenger window. “Don’t think anyone would describe the person they’re looking for with those things.”

Johnny thinks Taeyong’s explanation sounds like he’s just very insecure, and too afraid to put himself out there, rather than anything else. But in a way, he understands Taeyong.

“Jesus, I don't do much either- I love doing nothing, work gets me tired enough.” It takes a second for Johnny to realize that his attempt at sympathizing had only made him sound desperate. 

“I love food,” Johnny adds. After a second of silence that makes it sound just that much more awkward. 

“Uh, yeah— that's great,” Taeyong answers, and his hair ruffles with how fast his ears turn. His tail beats against the side of the center console. “It’s not that I try to be single, there just hadn’t been the right person yet, I guess.”

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” Johnny answers, mouth quicker than his brain can catch up. Taeyong shrugs.

Taeyong’s tail beats without a constant tempo, and that’s how Johnny knows Taeyong’s flustered. His ears, too, flatten and move in curiosity.

Johnny wishes Taeyong would ask if he’s single, just so he could grin and answer some open-ended proposition. But Taeyong doesn’t, he just curls a hand around his own tail and sends Johnny a bashful grin. 

Johnny pulls the corners of his mouth back at the failed conversation, and Taeyong snorts. Still, there’s some salvaging facts to Johnny’s attempt of conversation: that he now knows Taeyong is absolutely single. And that means there’s only the one threat of the dating ban still in his way.

With things are going, Johnny is confident that he’ll have Taeyong out for the first date somewhere in the next five years.

“You wanna stop for a twinkie?” Johnny nudges Taeyong’s shoulder. Taeyong’s shoulders shake with laughter as they step out the elevator, and he makes a affronted little _‘hey!’_ When Johnny turns right to the vending machine instead of the main area. Taeyong grabs him by the sleeve, laughing a little stupidly, and pulls Johnny in the other direction. 

“Not yet?” Johnny concedes, eyes on the cutest little fangs, fully visible when Taeyong laughs like that. “You’ve got that big thing due today.”

“No, not yet,” Taeyong murmurs, a little embarrassed, letting loose of Johnny’s tweed sleeve. “Later.”

Mark is the person Johnny bemoans the devastating superiority of Taeyong’s cuteness to today. He uses the three minutes their photocopy-machine takes to print out Mark’s twenty-page due report to vocalize the tribulations Taeyong makes him go though as Taeyong’s coffee runs through the clanky coffee maker. 

“I don't even know if he’s batting for my team. Ten told me he’s never had a boyfriend. No partner that Ten knows of, ever, for that matter.”

Mark snorts, watching one paper after the other crawl out of the machine, painfully slow. “Don't think he bats for any team that’s not the immediate source of income on his legal papers, actually.”

Mark looks up, face gleeful as it’s visible that he’s trying to come up with a joke. “Sexual orientation: money and career options.”

“You would know.” Johnny snorts, pulling a face after he sips from his own coffee. Drip coffee almost always tastes too sour for his liking, especially with no milk in it at all.

“We got any milk left? Taeyong always wants a shitton lot of it in his coffee,” Johnny asks. He had rummaged through the cluttered countertop looking for one. And while he could handle black coffee, he doubts Taeyong will. He’s got a sweet tooth the size of australia.

“Don't think so. Check Ten’s coffee machine, he keeps backups,” Mark says absentmindedly, collecting the inflow of papers and stacking them neatly. 

While he does that, he sneaks a gaze at Johnny, and then snorts. Johnny stops his rummaging through the mini fridge.

“What?” Johnny narrows his eyes at him.

“See if that works out, then, giving the kitty milk to make him like you. Gonna buy some squeaky toys next?”

Johnny gives up looking for milk, righting himself back up again. “Fuck you, Mark Lee. It’s called workplace camaraderie to make your deskmate coffee, but you wouldn’t know about that.”

“Sure I do, it’s just not coffee related. Donghyuck’s idea of bonding is just gossiping about every person that passes by the desk. Yo, _actually-,”_ his eyes get wide, suddenly remembering something. He lets the stack lay flat, mind moved on to bigger things. “There’s, like, _mad_ rumours about Kun getting it on with an employee. I don't know who, but Donghyuck says they’re on our floor and he’s watching, like, everyone like a hawk.”

“Not _everyone-_ everyone, hopefully. Tell him it’s not me,” Johnny jokes, raising his hands in mock-innocence.

“You did get a suspiciously fast promotion, though,” Mark counters, narrowing his eyes, trying to commit to the skit, but his twitching mouth betrays him.

“A man's gotta do what he’s gotta do to get the check,” Johnny shrugs innocently, but Mark’s loud snort makes him laugh out, too.

“Is it really that big of a deal though? Haven’t Yuta and Sicheng been hooking up way too obviously for, like, months? And nobody’s done anything?”

“Yeah, for obvious reasons, though,” Mark scoffs. At Johnny’s furrowed stare, his eyebrows raise into his fringe. “You didn’t know Sicheng is the son of the Co-CEO of the company?!”

Johnny did not. But it makes sense now that nobody did anything besides hushed whispers across the cubicle-tops when Yuta and Sicheng once again vanished into one of the empty meeting rooms.

“There’s lot of rumours, like, all the time, though.” He thinks about the infatuated stares Lucas throws the intern Xiaojun regularly. “Even though Jaehyun said somebody's got killed over it. I don’t think anyone would get fired for being in love. Kun is way too big on peace, joy and pancakes.”

“Maybe,” Mark gathers his papers up again, slipping a pinclip over the edge of the stack. Johnny grabs the two cups, follows him across the hallway to the main working area again. “But would you be willing to risk it?”

 _Kind of,_ Johnny admits to himself. What he’s not willing to risk is his losing his pride in admitting he’s actually going to stop by the vending machine in the hallway for a twinkie roll for Taeyong, not just go by Ten’s table for some milk.

  
  
  


(^・x・^)

  
  
  
  
  


Johnny knows Kun puts lots of value on a open and friendly working environment that promotes the growth of teamwork and friendship. The first weeks of each year alone are cluttered with workshops to strengthen workplace friendships, and each time he holds some sort of announcement, it’s accompanied by his wishes for everyone to feel as comfortable in their cubicle as in their own home, and to be open, and comfortable with everyone.

To him, it’s exactly what his former boss used to say, and he believes it to be an impossible act to feel as home at workplace as in their own four walls. 

Ten and Taeyong took those words to heart, it would seem. Because that’s the only reason Johnny can find that would explain why the two cats are talking about _heat_ , in the middle of the day, two feet away from Johnny. 

Well, rather it’s Ten lounging around Taeyong’s half of the cubicle while talking about wildly inappropriate topics at the workplace, while Taeyong just continues working.

It’s mostly Ten, who never has much to do when their CEO runs through nothing but meetings and isn’t needed. On those days, it’s his favorite pastime to bother the other catboy on their floor, Taeyong. Despite their different personalities, they seem to get along well- in their own way of course. Having learnt his life lesson, Johnny doesn’t even try to understand the cats.

Even while Ten is talking, Taeyong continues clicking away on his screen, blissfully ignoring the fact that Johnny- without trying to or not- has to listen in on Ten advising Taeyong on the best ways to spend someones heat by themselves. There’s mentions about a specific sextoy Ten recommends, or a firm with especially competent heat-helpers. 

Johnny isn't going to act stupid, he's been a teen with a steady internet connection and a healthy sex drive. He knows what happens when hybrids go into heat. _Knows,_ meaning he’s jerked it to videos of catboys keening when tugged on their tail, countless times. Used to, at least. 

He doesn’t deny that his stomach takes a noticeable tip into sour possessiveness at the thought of Taeyong hiring someone to see him during his most vulnerable state. _He’s_ seen him, flushed out of his mind, purring and acting like more cat than human.   
  
They’ve never talked about that day again. Taeyong had shot him a text on Sunday evening, telling him that he’ll be back to work by tomorrow, and for Johnny to pick him up. Needless to say, the drive to work on Monday felt five hours long, while Johnny made stupidly senseless conversation, trying not to let his mind stray. He didn’t wonder if there were any reasons Taeyong wore turtlenecks to work the next days, as if he was trying to hide something. Didn’t think about what happened to his sweater- or if maybe it still was caught between blanket and mattress in Taeyong’s bed.  
As if embarrassment and implications made his teeth stick together, he never managed to ask for his sweater back. For one because he didn’t want to make Taeyong feel as if he had to explain himself, and another because just the thought of Taeyong wearing his sweater, in a pile of blankets, made his chest feel tight with heat.

Nevertheless, he doesn't let his thoughts stray- doesn't let himself imagine Taeyong in any compromising situations— because he’s mom’s raised him to be considerate gentleman. He’s seen Taeyong in heat, and it didn’t look half as the horny frenzied mess it was depicted in porn. Rather, just the nauseousness of a high-running fever, from what it looked like. Then again, he’s never went through one himself.

His ears burn with warmth as he decides that financial reports are a much, much better way to spend time; without the guilt of stepping in on someone's privacy, too. He manages for a few moments to keeps his eyes on his screen, zoning out of the conversation the two continue to have.

“I don’t understand why you’re so against just hiring someone for three days, and then you’ll never see them again.”

“I dont have the spare money lying around to hire one of the heat-helpers, and neither do I want a stranger in my home watching me lose my mind, so no thank you.”

“Well, if it’s not occurred to you yet, there are enough people that would do it for free, you just gotta ask. It’s how I managed to spend none of my past heats alone,” Ten answers.

“It’s also how I managed to never get caught banging in the meeting rooms,” Taeyong shoots back, unusually snappy.

Johnny’s eyebrows rise, and he bites down on his lip to hide the sound of surprise. Count on Ten to something like that. Absently, he wonders if Donghyuck is really listening in, because if he is, he’s got to be having the time of his life.

Here’s a thing: Ten almost always talks through a smirk. Johnny never knows if Ten just finds great amusement in making the lives of the common workers much much harder since he’s the untouchable Ten, by proxy of being the secretary slash personal assistant of the untouchable CEO Qian Kun. Or if Ten is just always in on a cosmically large joke, and he’s watching chaos unfold in sated glee like an old god.

“Don’t sound too jealous, Yong.” Ten laughs lowly, tail smacking against a scowling Taeyong’s thigh.

Johnny feels a little bad knowing nothing about heat but what he’d learned from porn years ago- which is definitely not a trustworthy source of information. If his cubicle mate has a regular physical reason slash ailment to be excused from work, shouldn’t he make the effort to know what happens, and secondly, how to make the days before and after it more pleasant for Taeyong?

With half an ear on the ongoing conversation, Johnny closes his financial report window and opens his browser. He thinks for a second about how he should phrase his question: how to help cathybrid in heat? Things that help catboys in heat? 

He decides against making it too specific, instead just typing in ‘male cathybrid heat’, and hitting search.

He skims through the first helpful article, picking up on words such as increased body temperature, decrease of focus, change of temper, scent sensitivity—

And then— _a healthy cat hybrid should experience heat twice a year._ His brain hooks on that sentence, crumples it between trying to resurface memories and pulls it back straight in trying to make sense of it.

Twice a year? If Johnny has been catching on to some things properly, he’s witnessed Taeyong in heat two times, one right after they had became cubicle mates, beginning of the year, and that time he gave Taeyong that sweater. Two times _he knows of,_ in way less than a year.

What does that mean? If the article says healthy hybrids experience a heat twice a year, it does imply that Taeyong is unhealthy. Johnny’s brain stutters, Taeyong used to be pretty exhausted and stressed, but he never thought it was to an extent it could be considered an illness. Why were Ten and Taeyong talking about another upcoming heat then? 

He opens another tab. _Reasons heat more often than 2 in year,_ he types.   
  


And doesn’t click search.  
  


Instead, his finger hovers over his mouse, unable to hit go. All his faux colleague bravado from before is gone, and instead, he feels like he’s intruding on something that shouldn’t at all concern him. Yes, he hadn’t started to look things up with bad intentions, but right now, basically trying to diagnose Taeyong with something by google searches, he— he feels way too nosy. 

Taeyong is so protective about revealing things about himself, or how he feels, that finding out that he liked cooking alone had taken Johnny multiple months to find out. A _hobby-_ something what other people would have given away by the third conversation, had taken Johnny months.

An uncomfortable feeling spreads.

He does not think Taeyong would appreciate him snooping around, even if just digitally. 

Ten giggles, accompanied by saying something unclearly. “You know, wouldn't even be strangers, either. I could actually name some people willing to help you right n–“

Taeyong says something sharply, too low for Johnny to hear. Ten answers something in turn, and Taeyong makes an affronted noise.

“Can you not do this at work?!” Taeyong whispers, basically hissing, tone of voice urgent. 

Momentarily, it pulls Johnny out of his little downward spiral of whatever he was just going through. Johnny wonders what could have made Taeyong embarrassed now, after fifteen minutes of making Johnny run through twenty emotions a minute, listening to the best ways to sexually choke oneself without injury. 

Whatever it is, it’s gotta be a worse out-of-place topic than heat, and well, there's where Johnny’s patience ends.

Without thinking much- just because it’s too easy for his gaze to slide just one inch off of his screen and be able to look into Taeyong’s half of the cubicle- he lets his gaze travel off of the top of his screen.  
  


Taeyong is flushed to the top of his cheeks, and his ears are flicking downwards. He himself is turned away from his desktop toward Ten, who is easily and confidently slouched on the edge of Taeyong’s table. 

Ten, whose eyes are already on Johnny’s when he moves his gaze upward.

Expectant. Knowing, maybe.

At their shared glance, Ten’s left eyebrow pulls up, and there’s the ever-present curl of a smirk around his lips. Like a shock of cold water, surprised, Johnny’s gaze jerks back down to his computer, feeling his own face grow hotter. 

Even worse, it lands on his still open tab about catboy heats, and he feels a comically large wave of shame roll down his back. Somehow, even though it can't be possible, he feels as if Ten knew exactly what Johnny was looking at, just now.  
Like he’s been caught doing something illegal, his hand jerks on his mouse to close the tabs.

(^・x・^)

  
  
  
  


“Everyone, if I could have your attention please.”

  
  


Johnny, likewise with Taeyong, looks up from his desktop. Unsure where their head of department is trying to hold this announcement from. Johnny orients himself by where Taeyong’s ears are pointed. Kun, currently stepping onto a chair by the entranceway of the cubicle area, waits for a moment, before clearing his throat once again.

Hushed whispers die out. Johnny sneaks a questioning glance toward Taeyong, who purses his lips and shrugs in answer. As unknowing as him, then.

“As I'm sure many of you have noticed, I have been made aware of a set of-... rumours making their way through our department. I feel compelled to make something clear.”

Kun makes a sweeping motion over the present employees.

“Since the recession of my father, I have changed many things about how this company is run and I am proud of the changes we’ve made, as the team that we are—“

Johnny hides his snort behind his fist. There’s no denying that their CEO Qian Kun has an affinity for dramatics.

“To address the elephant in the room, yes, I admit that I have been involved in a romantic relationship with one of our co-workers, currently present right beside me, Ten—,” he doesn’t get much further, as immediately a wave of affronted and surprised whispers break out.

Johnny’s eyebrows feel stuck to his hairline. Ten and Kun had been having a workplace affair this whole time? That’s who had been having the affair Mark told him about? _Did Donghyuck know this?_

Astonished, he turns wide eyes upon Taeyong, curious to see the other catboy’s reaction with the news of his friend.

Just to see that, well, there’s not much of one. 

Taeyong looks cool as a cucumber, leant forward on his elbows, staring toward where Kun is trying to calm everyone down with his hands. As if they didn't just get a bomb dropped on them. As if his best friend hasn’t been banging their CEO on the low, apparently.

At Johnny’s urgently questioning gaze and in disbelief-widened eyes, Taeyong smiles satedly. Then, he lifts a hand to just tap against his nose tellingly, raising an eyebrow of his own. 

Johnny narrows his eyes, head tilting a little sideways. Is Taeyong trying to tell him he’s been fully aware of what was going on between Kun and Ten just by scent? 

Stumped, he has to make mental notice to definitely inquire about just _how_ sensitive a hybrid’s nose is later on. For now, Kun has managed to get most of the attention back on himself, continuing his announcement.

“And further, I want to set a misunderstanding right. There has not been a dating ban since I have taken hold of the company. It was stated in the contracts you have received and signed earlier this year. I know it’s been happening here and there and the fact that I’ve never pulled consequences should have resolved in that the issue had been made clear enough.”

The corners of Johnny’s mouth tug back guiltily. He remembers how he had read only the legal columns about vacationing days and pay. It’s on him, he guesses, to have blindly believed Jaehyun’s, admittedly, stupid tales about hired killers. Then again, nobody on their floor seems to have actually read their legal extension of pay-papers. 

Kun continues his talk, hands moving like the principal conductor would infront of his orchestra.

“Additionally, have I not implemented countless workshops to make us, as a team, grow closer every day? I encourage friendship and relationships, even– as long as they remain to keep our department as accepting and open as ever.” 

To say the least, Johnny is greatly entertained. Letting his eyes travel, he can see that not everybody shares the same sentiment, though. Hyeojeung’s face from a few cubicles down is flushed red in- _anger?_ Embarrassment? Johnny vividly recalls her threatening to reach in a complaint to HQ about Sicheng and Yuta’s situation. 

“To clearly state the state of the non-existent dating policy has been ordered to the head of departments of our company, and the other floors will get a clearer explanation of it following the day. Lastly— I do not favor any employee over another in the company, and my relationship is strictly not influenced by my position and vice-versa, and remains out of the workplace. Still, since it is a concern of mine and Ten’s privacy, I would like to ask to not spread this information recklessly. Let us all be respectful, yes?”

A general sound of affirmation runs through their floor, and Kun nods approvingly, stepping down from the chair. Johnny’s gaze travels to a few feet left of their boss, where Ten is stood, leant against the wall. He looks okay- as in Johnny still doesn’t really know how to read him- but that he doesn’t look five feet away from a mental breakdown. The end of his tail is curled around his own leg, and Kun continues talking in his booming voice, even as he’s not as visible anymore.

“I invite everyone to direct their feelings about this situation toward me, as I will be tolerating complaints in my office for the rest of the day. Understand that this is an offer— and the _only_ way I will be tolerating criticism about this topic. Any ill-meant actions regarding me or Ten that reach me in any other way will be treated with the consequences I see fit.”

He smiles, bright and looking like the best son-in-law one could possible have.

“Please see my very competent assistant to see you in my office if you wish to speak to me, personally. If I do not see you there, I wish you all a pleasant rest of the week and will see you at our department’s christmas party.”

With that, Kun bows, smiling as amicably as ever, as if he hadn’t just threatened to fire everyone who was even just _thinking_ about bitching about Ten. Johnny can’t _not_ grin.  
  


“How someone can be so laughable yet so badass will remain a mystery to me,” Donghyuck says in awe, still standing, chin tilted up to get a good look at their CEO retreating into his glass-panelled office. Ten pushes off of the wall, following after, tail swishing against Kun’s side as he falls in step.

Johnny watches and he thinks. Or maybe he doesn’t think at all. His brain just buzzes as it takes a little moment for the repercussions, implications, results of Kun’s announcement to settle. And when they do, it’s like an aftertaste of tonic water. Sweet, but bitter at the same time. 

Johnny swallows tightly, deciding not to look at Taeyong too quickly. In fear of falling to his knees and beg for Taeyong to date him right there and then, maybe. He doesn’t even know what he would do.

Immediately, his brain conjures up ideas of what he _could_ have now that it’s not repercussed by loss of one’s life anymore to have a cripplingly large crush on his coworker. Common things, daily, just tinged with dreamy runaway romantics. Putting a heavy-cream cup of coffee down on Taeyong’s desk, and instead of a muttered thanks its a quick, soft press of lips on his own in gratitude.

Packing up when it’s time to leave for home, helping Taeyong into those big coats he wears now that it’s cold outside, pulling a hand over his ears in complete casualness like a duck takes to water. And during elevator rush-hour, pulling Taeyong to his side under his arm, watchful of his tail as to no one could hurt him.

By now his imagination is on a downward spiral bound to driving himself to desolate madness— conjuring up deep-rooted figments of want that have seeded themselves with just a passing thought; idea upon idea; flooding his conscious brain. 

Things like: Not pulling up at the curb of Taeyong’s home, but to be there already. In the morning, on the side of the same bed, brush the fringe out of Taeyong’s face and tell him _yeah, that shirt works really well with those pants,_ walking the awning long staircase down together, keeping his hand on Taeyong’s thigh as he drives them to work.

The annual christmas party, too. He had just barely been part of the last christmas festivities, but this one— an image of his hand staying on the gentle dip of Taeyong’s spine over the course of an entire evening, unapologetic of all their coworkers watching, Taeyong with a scarf to hide the hickeys he’d leave, too—

_Ok yeah,_ he thinks, mouth weirdly dry all of a sudden, turning back to his desktop, resolutely not looking to the other side to Taeyong, and neither to Donghyuck. _Some points were made in favor of confessing to Taeyong._

But then again, that's only wishful thinking of his own traitorous mind, and might not even be close to the real thing. If it were to come to it, of course.

Thing is, with all he’s learnt about Taeyong so far, all the things he’s observed and added together, he can’t imagine being loved by Taeyong being anything other than a dream come true. A dream of and with a dream with a fuzzy black tail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All i do is lie! this is going to be three-chaptered after all!


	3. fuzzier lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The christmas office party!

It’s the evening of the Christmas party, and Taeyong is late.

Sitting in his idling car, immediately, Johnny’s brain begins sounding off alarms with the last time Taeyong had been late being— 

The car door on the passenger’s side gets jerked open. Johnny jolts, eyes wide as he stares at Taeyong, hair fuzzy around the kitten’s face, chest rising heavily with exertion.

“I might need you to help me carry some things down,” Taeyong says in lieu of a greeting, grinning abashedly, a little guiltily.

Johnny nods and the seatbelt is unbuckled quickly, and the car locked just as quick as Johnny follows Taeyong up the dimly lit flight of stairs up to his flat. 

“Sorry, old building. Something’s always broken.” Taeyong smiles down from over his shoulder, grimacing as he points upward to the malfunctioning light bulbs of the stairwell. The door to Taeyong’s apartment is still left open as they reach the actual floor of it.  
  


In the brighter lights of Taeyong’s apartment, Johnny finally gets a better look at him. And the sight makes his mouth dry up considerably.

Maybe it’s the fact that Taeyong usually wears loosely cut slacks that it’s even more apparent when he’s in tighter pants, and even though Johnny has seen otherwise before, the sight knocks some stupid into him nonetheless. No matter how used he should be to the looks of Taeyong by now.

The hybrid-specific pants are tight around his hips and thighs, cutting slightly looser below the knee. A black turtleneck is what he wears above that, tucked under the rather high waistband of the pants, cinched in with a simple belt. It’s beautifully understated, kind of coquettish but at the same time stylishly minimal. 

Taeyong’s fully covered up, yet it’s Taeyong’s body is what’s being showcased, not the clothes. Tight, slim and kind of everything about him too pretty to wrap Johnny’s mind around. Taeyong’s out to kill him tonight, that’s for sure.

Johnny is tempted to make a comment about Taeyong’s unusual willingness to show off, but he’s not willing to crush the budding blessing of a confident Taeyong in tight clothing for the short pleasure of a friendly verbal jab.

Taeyong already has multiple containers of food in his arms, and maybe it’s still his brain lagging on the devilish defined way Taeyong’s thighs look, or if it’s the multiple more dishes on the counter that make the next words sound of Johnny’s mouth.

“Um, jesus fuck,” he says, and a breathless rush of laughter peals out of Taeyong. Then, his eyes widen as if realizing something a little late.

“Wait, I need you to help me decide between jackets–,” Taeyong says, dropping the packaged dishes back onto the counter and hurrying to the adjacent living room, to the couch, where multiple jackets are slung over. Judging by the sheer size of the lump of clothing, it’s definitely more than two, and Johnny can't shake the smile as he thinks about Taeyong nervously running through an assortment of outfits, trying to find the best one and losing track of time in the process. 

_Cute,_ his brain screams, which is a thought so familiar by now it’s smooth around the edges like a beach-found palm-softened stone. Taeyong bends over the couch, fishing through the clothes, sending Johnny’s brain lagging in response.

 _And sexy?_ His brain repeats now, fixated on the movings of Taeyong’s body, drinking it in like a sight never had before. Like this, he’s just that much more- he struggles to find the right word- he’s just so _tiny._ Strong and wired with strength, but petite and svelte.  
  


He turns around with a dog-tooth checkered jacket, asking if it’s alright. It is, but Taeyong isn’t satisfied, slipping it off and putting it aside to grab another one.

Taeyong pulls a black blazer on, striking a weird starfish sticking-all-limbs-out pose to show of the garment. 

“Why only blazers? I feel like I have to remind you that, _yes,_ this is an office party, but it’s _not_ work.” Johnny feels the need to be just a tad annoying.

Taeyong’s eyes get wide, agreeing but weirdly so. His ears perk straight up before dipping down. “Too formal? I already thought it was too stiff.”

“Not that. Rather: Funeral,” Johnny responds, pointedly looking at Taeyong’s somber-looking outfit in the general range of _just_ black.

Taeyong looks down at himself, and then sighs, broad shoulders sinking.

The best compromise, they surmise, is option number one.

The dog-tooth patterned jacket is beige and a greyish combination with black, reaching a little bit above the middle of Taeyong’s thighs as he fiddles with the fit of it. Clean, but still casual enough to not seem prudish.

“Like this?” Taeyong says, turning in a quick circle, eyes big as marbles as he throws Johnny a gaze over his shoulder. His tail ticks upward in a funny little circle-motion, somewhat slower in the turn than Taeyong’s center of body.

Johnny goes through a very quick array of emotions. On one hand, glad the jacket covers up the slim lines of Taeyong’s torso which no doubt would have Johnny staring for the rest of the night, and one the other hand he’s missing the lovely sight of Taeyong’s slim waist the second the kitten slips the jacket over his shoulders. 

“It’s good, brings out your ears,” Johnny says, and Taeyong answers with a _‘psh.’_ Johnny, briefly, wonders if Taeyong has anyone to impress tonight.  
  


“They’re black,” Taeyong says drily. “There’s no color that makes black stand out.”  
  


“I meant the pink,” Johnny answers, because it's the pink insides of Taeyong’s ears that were suddenly most apparent with the black and beige ensemble. Then, Taeyong’s words register and he makes an incredulous face.  
  


“Sure there is. Wear white all over and your fur will look mighty striking,” he jabs back and Taeyong’s tail ticks upward in response.   
  


“White isn’t a color, moron.”   
  


Johnny’s eyebrows rise up at Taeyong’s bratty behavior. Not often that he makes use of his quick wit, but by now they’re comfortable enough with each other to be a little unkind. “Oh, that’s how you wanna play, huh?”

Taeyong steps close, smiling, pushing a finger into Johnny’s chest.

“Yes. And I want _you_ to play nice and carry these,–” he slips the greyish beige blazer on straight across his shouldera again, and points a finger to the stacked dishes. Still close, he throws a gaze up at Johnny through his lashes, eyes big under a choppy fringe of black. To Johnny, it feels as if time stops as their eyes meet, bravado faltering under the sudden onslaught of beauty, so close to him. So close, yet kind of unreachable. Taeyong’s lashes flutter, sweeping feathery close to the little scar on the top of his cheekbone.

Johnny’s stunned silence over Taeyong’s prettiness is apparently taken as continuation of their bickering, and Taeyong tacks on a pretty _please._

Something inside Johnny’s brain clanks like screws loose in a tank, and he nods mutely, taking the dishes a smiling Taeyong presses into his hands.

They try to secure them in the backseat as best as they can, but the home-made cream puffs Taeyong refuses to let out of his sight, and keeps them on his lap during the drive, in fear of messing up the arrangement of the pastries.

He’s lively, today, Johnny thinks. Trying to steal gazes at Taeyong every now and then while driving. Taeyong had barely managed to get his hair under control, but weirdly enough the choppy strands frizzed around his big eyes make him look just that much lovelier.

Taeyong chats some about the process of cooking, and Johnny nods along every now and then, barely managing to get in more than a few words. Weirdly enough, the drive to work feels much, much shorter than usual.

During the elevator’s slow crawl up to the floor of the party, Taeyong begins fussing nervously. His tail hits against the side of Johnny's legs multiple times and when Taeyong winces, pulling his shoulders up, Johnny laughs.

“Sorry, I’m kind of nervous,” Taeyong says, brushing away his hair out of his face for the third time in a minute. 

“I can tell,” Johnny laughs, and makes a show to act as if in great pain the next time Taeyong’s tail comes in contact with his leg.

Through the shiny metal doors, Johnny can see Taeyong’s face pulling into a grimace, and he whines about _Johnny stop teasing-_ and _I don’t have a hand free I can’t hold it still, stop being like that—_

Taeyong’s whiny demise makes Johnny laugh even more, and he knows it’s not too serious because Taeyong’s ears twitch in his direction at the sound, lifting from their flattened position. 

“I could hold it for you,” he says, voice barely calmed from laughter, and his face falls the second after. He didn’t mean to say that. 

In the golden brassy tinted reflection of the elevator door, Taeyong’s eyes go wide.

That is, until the elevator dings and Taeyong’s reflection is pulled apart by the doors, opening to reveal an already bustling array of noise coming from their department.

Within a second, Taeyong’s tail resumes unsteady swishing. Johnny hopes the weird bout of awkwardness to pass as quickly as possible, and begins to follow Taeyong down the hallway to the left, where the big, unwalled spaces of their working floor are. To the right there are storage rooms, bathrooms, some more meeting rooms, as well as the kitchen and clothing room.

The sounds of a decently sized party become even louder, and there’s a noticeable falter in Taeyong’s step as they can reach the opening floor. His tail moves anxiously, quicker than usual.

“Calm down,” Johnny murmurs, leaning down to speak to Taeyong privately. Taeyong’s eyes go out to the open floor, the usual tables removed to make space for some happy socializing.

“What if they don’t like my food— should we not say that I made it?” Wide eyes turn up to him, and a black cat-ear dances a nervous shuffle on Taeyong’s head. The concern is serious, Johnny can see that. Serious to Taeyong, but absolutely not rooted in reality. 

“Impossible,” Johnny dismisses, “I’ve been getting dishes from you for months now and have yet to taste something not absolutely delicious.” He pushes a gentle elbow into Taeyong’s shoulder. “Or anything below the level of a three star michelin.”

It’s not even a lie, so maybe that’s why it comes so easy to him to praise Taeyong. It too, multiplies the fizzy feeling in his chest, the one that’s even more severe when in their close space, Taeyong’s head tilts up with a grateful smile and crinkled up eyes. His canines leave a little indent on Taeyong’s lower lip and the thought of how easy it would be to just dip down and press a kiss on those lips crosses Johnny’s mind. Not a salacious kiss, per se, just a quick press of lips on lips, a quick gesture of _I’m right here with you,_ or _we’re in this together—_

It sobers him up some, and his smile in answer to Taeyong’s is crooked and shaky. Thankfully, Taeyong doesn’t seem to notice because he’s already turned to an approaching Doyoung.

Doyoung _oohs_ appreciatively at seeing Taeyong’s hands full with food, and then _aahs_ with a twinge of worry or panic, even more impressed in terror when he sees that Johnny is dealing with the same, if not more.

“ _Jesus,_ Yong,” he says, guiding them to the buffet that’s put in a open meeting room facing the wide floor where everybody is mingling. “When I said that people should bring dishes for everyone I didn’t mean that you should cover it all.”

“Instructions unclear,” Johnny throws in as he walks behind the two, laughing quietly to himself. Taeyong’s shoulders too, shake.

“I made the quiche, but then I remembered that Xiaojun is a vegetarian so I made another vegetable one, and then a salad for those with high blood pressu—,“ Taeyong runs through an explanation for six dishes like that. Doyoung’s face screws up more with every explanation added on, and when Taeyong’s done, the other’s mouth is pinched, eyebrows pulled together.

Doyoung sighs exaggeratedly, but there’s a telltale fondness in his features as he helps Taeyong remove aluminum foil from the dishes as he listens intently. Johnny tries to arrange the dishes he had been carrying prettily with the limited space on the table.

Before he can really struggle, Taeyong’s hand joins his two, helping him with a particularly tricky lid of a salad bowl. All the while Taeyong continues his talk with Doyoung, who complains about the lack of help with setting up, but also that it’s his fault he hadn’t asked no one to arrive earlier.

Taeyong laughs, touching a gentle hand to Johnny’s arm when he mutters an embarrassed thanks for the help.

Jaehyun had already broken something, and that’s the next thing Doyoung complains about, words salted with a heavy dose of cursing. That, until Taeil sticks his head through the open doors, needing Doyoung’s help with some other tables and where to put them.

“Try those, tell me how they are,” Taeyong nudges him when Doyoung huffs and goes after the other department manager, nodding to the prettily set cream puffs.

“Don’t mind Doyoung’s complaints about Jaehyun. I think he’s crushing and dealing with it in a weird way.”

“Jesus,” Johnny says, surprised, halting in the motion of lifting the pastry to his mouth, “how many more?” 

He means that in connection to Kun’s announcement earlier this week, eradicating the dating ban. Since then, he’s heard of at least three workplace relationships in their first budding steps. Even on Xiaojun’s desk there had been a suspicious flower bouquet.

Taeyong’s ears tilt and so does his head, slightly. His eyebrows furrow as he scans Johnny’s face. “What do you mean?”

See, what Johnny is not going to do, is say he thought he’d be the only one to announce his infatuation following the announcement. He’s immediately racking his brain for the easy way out, and his mind lands on the creampuff still held in his hand.

Instead of an answer, Taeyong’s eyebrows rise in bewilderment. Johnny tries to chew around the entire cream puff pastry he just shoved into his mouth.

“God, that’s good!” He tries to say. Taeyong’s face pulls together in watching him trying to swallow, and Johnny kind of regrets everything he’s ever done. 

“Better than the ones out the vending machine. Like tenfold that,” he says, once he’s decently swallowed.

“Oh, thank you!” Taeyong smiles happily, seemingly absolutely willing to act as if Johnny’s past twenty seconds had never happened. Johnny takes that extended olive branch gratefully. 

“That’s high praise, actually,” Taeyong says, pulling the dishes in a neater order. “I really love those.”

He says that with an embarrassed jump of his shoulders, and a nudge of his tail against Johnny’s thigh, by now a familiar sensation. Johnny laughs, in turn willing to act as if Taeyong’s addiction to twinkie rolls had until now gone unnoticed.   
  


They both go to the next meeting room over to get some beers, where they meet Mark and Donghyuck and Johnny falls into easy conversation with their cubicle neighbors.

It’s kind of unspoken, hovering between them, that they remain close to each other over the course of the evening. 

After some time, Taeyong signals that he’s going to get rid of his bag and jacket, and without thought, Johnny follows him to the cloak room.   
  


Noises of the party reach the room, and Taeyong laughs lowly over a screech that’s decidedly Donghyuck. Johnny puts his beer on the nearest surface, shucking his own jacket off, too. It messes up the collar of his shirt some, and he clasps the collar over again haphazardly. 

Maybe his mind’s not really paying attention to the task at hand, since his eyes are glued to the slim form of Taeyong’s body as he reaches up to slip his jacket over the nearest hook.

As if in slow-motion, time stopping just for Johnny to keep his eyes on Taeyong, Johnny drinks in the slender taper of Taeyong’s waist, the way his jeans cling to the backs of his thighs, strong but slim. 

Taeyong tugs at his own clothes, fixing himself in a mirror next to the door. Johnny swallows, drily, taking his own jacket to hang it over the hook of where Taeyong’s is. The moment he’s next to Taeyong, immediately, there’s the little pressure of Taeyong’s tail against his body.

At Johnny’s little snort of laughter, Taeyong himself looks down to his tail curling around Johnny’s leg, and he makes a little turn of his eyes as if handling an unruly child. Their eyes meet in the mirror, Johnny slightly behind Taeyong, off to the side.

“You'd tell me if you mind, right?” 

Johnny’s shoulders sag a little in fond annoyance. “For the twentieth time, I don't. You said it’s a subconscious thing like affection, right? To me it’s like someone throwing smiles at me.”

Taeyong’s left ear does that twitch again, but Taeyong nods nonetheless, hesitant. “I’m just making sure-,”

“Believe me, if I didn't like it, you’d have noticed by now.” Johnny says, hating every ounce of uncertainty in Taeyong’s eyes. He wants Taeyong to touch him as much as he wants, uninhibited, uncaring. It’s what has kept him strung along all this time, the thing where their progress is most noticeable. In the way Taeyong keeps close.

Taeyong’s eyes meet his again in the mirror, searching. “Sometimes I think you don't like it– because– um. If you do like it, then why don’t you ever touch it?” 

Taeyong’s words are a humped mess as they rush out of him, ears twitching backward with the surprised sound from Johnny. Their eyes lock for a moment's breath, as the words take another second to sink in.

Nervous piterry energy settles on the back of Johnny’s neck. It feels a suspicious amount like anticipation.

“Honestly? I didn't know I was allowed to,” Johnny laughs nervously, wringing a hand over the back of his neck.

Taeyong is decently flushed, but still he holds Johnny’s gaze, determined, eyebrows furrowing. “Why wouldn't you be?” 

“Because– because it’s not really polite, isn't it? I thought hybrids don't like people just touching their animal-parts?”

“That’s a strangers rule, Johnny.” At his words, Taeyong grimaces incredulously. “I’m on you with my tail all the time, wouldn’t it be silly if I would get mad at you for reciprocating?”

“Right.” Something warm sizzles in Johnny’s stomach like the carbonated beer he just downed. His eyes dip down, to where Taeyong’s black tail pushes against his thigh. His hands feel too clammy all of a sudden, faced with the sudden opportunity to do something he’s been itching to do for months now. And yet, with all the build-up, he’s so nervous about it he can’t actually bring himself to reach down.

Taeyong’s eyebrows twitch up and so do his ears, “So? Are you gonna do it?”

The tip of his tail makes a funny move.

“Um,” Johnny says, hands hovering unsurely at hip-height. Does he pet Taeyong just like a regular cat? That thought alone feels itchy to him, Taeyong isn’t a cat, he’s got the possibility to say what he likes and what he doesn’t. “I'm not sure how to do it. What's the right way?”

“Jesus, don’t always be so scared of treating me like part cat that I am.” Unexpectedly, Taeyong laughs. A peal of bright giggles, and he drags a hand over his squirmy ear, looking at Johnny through the mirror. 

“It’s not like I hate being a hybrid. It’s good to know you’re being respectful, but I wish you could just be bold sometimes.”  
  


And well, that’s something. Bold isn’t something he’d thought Taeyong would like. Instead, it was always the proper distance and respect Johnny tried to keep up, trying not to be too overwhelming too soon. If he’d known Taeyong likes bold, he wouldn’t still be here, nearly one year later, still a mile away from first base.

It’s Taeyong’s comment that makes Johnny bridge over his hesitancy, lowering his hand to wrap around the sleek length of Taeyong’s tail. With a decided lift to it, Taeyong’s tail uncurls from his leg easily, and Johnny lets his hand travel. In reverence, at first, at how easily Taeyong’s tail gives in to touch.

The tail glides through his hands like butter; soft, fuzzy fur around his fingers as if he’s nail-deep in a cloud. There’s a palpable strength to the appendage, despite its slim look. It curls in Johnny’s hands, the end up against his wrist, and Johnny hears a rushed exhale from Taeyong. He lets his hand smooth downward in the direction of the tail’s fur, before reaching up to repeat the motion. Never higher than the two lower thirds of the tail’s length, because— there are limits to his fun.

“It’s- it’s really soft,” Johnny says, uninhibited in his honesty, not willing to move his eyes from the shiny black tail in his hands. “And pretty.”

Taeyong makes an amused sound. Johnny’s eyes tick upward to Taeyong’s mirrored face. A small smile around his lips, lids lower than before.

“Thank you,” Taeyong answers, and his voice does that thing where it’s two-sided with a rumble below his words.

Johnny entertains himself with petting Taeyong’s beautiful tail again for a short minute. Almost with a reverence in his touch, as he handles the sleek slick black fur, as soft as a dandelion when it’s about to be picked up in the wind.

“You messed your shirt collar up,” Taeyong comments, clearing his throat after and Johnny shrugs in answer.

“Yeah, but I don’t really care. It's just a party–,”

Taeyong tuts. “A party where some people still see you as their superior and you see yours. Shouldn’t run around sloppy just because some people have a beer in their hand.”

Johnny smiles, scoffing slightly. He lets the tail run through his hand slowly. “Not everybody is as steadfastly proper as you, Taeyongie.”

“I know, and it’s a pity. _Let me-,_ ” Taeyong turns around, stepping close to take on the task by himself. The motion puts tension on his tail, and Taeyong makes an awkward little side step to hook a hand under his own tail and tug, laughing as Johnny pouts at having to let go.

“‘M not sure I’ll be able to stop touching it now that I'm allowed to,” Johnny admits, and Taeyong’s face crinkles in amusement. They’re so close their chests are just a hand’s length apart.

“Good to know,” Taeyong muses, reaching up and tugging the lapels of Johnny’s shirt up top. His voice is low, private, and Johnny feels the rush of breath against his neck. “At least something that’s mutual then.”

He pointedly keeps his eyes on the collar as he says that. Johnny needs just one gaze to know its a facade though. One that's betrayed by the jittery flutter of his fingers, and the twitches of his left ear. A nervous habit.

It’s a bold comment, and implications make Johnny’s stomach tip downward. Immediately, the air between them feels thick, situation charged with a sizzling tension. 

Taeyong’s eyes are on his own hand as he fixes Johnny’s collar, but Johnny’s are on Taeyong’s face. The pretty half-moons of his lashes, high cheekbones and apples of his cheeks. Redder than before.

The sight fades as Taeyong has him tilt his head up, his fingers pulling behind the rim of Johnny’s shirt, along his nape. His fingers run smoothly along the folded edge, across skin, and warmth drips along Johnny’s spine. 

Another touch joins, this one around knee height, and Johnny immediately recognizes it as the tentative touch of Taeyong’s tail. By now, Johnny’s so welcome and open to it he’s definitely thinking he could make it a regular occurrence.  
  


If Taeyong says it’s more steered by subconscious feelings, that it’s a silent offer of affection, even when there’s nothing said, then Johnny absolutely fails to understand how anyone could hate that.  
  


“There,” Taeyong says, as Johnny head tilts down again, eyes up at Johnny through his lashes before darting away again. His hands linger though, slipping down to rest on Johnny’s chest. Warm, the touch seeping through his sweater. “All done.” 

These little gazes- the shy ones, that Taeyong can’t hold for long, the ones that make his ears twitch and cheeks color- they just make Johnny’s stomach tint with heat; make him want more.

“You look really good tonight, Johnny,” Taeyong says, lids just a tad heavier than usual, but eyes honest and shiny. An image pops in Johnny’s head, of tugging a hand under Taeyong’s chin, lifting it up so he’ll have to look at him, unable to duck his head in shyness. Tell Taeyong he’s as pretty as ever and still even prettier tonight, and have Taeyong’s lashes sweep over flushed cheeks before their lips meet.

Imagining possible scenarios is the possibly worst thing to do, because it makes his brain immediately flood with fifty other idea of how Taeyong would respond to a decided tug into one of the backrooms, how he could tug the collar of the turtleneck down just enough to have the kitten gasping breathless in his arms, teeth digging into the pretty skin under his jawline.

Johnny’s body is screaming at him to let his hands settle around Taeyong’s waist, because it would be so, so easy to just let his hands span around the tiny space of it, pull him tight against himself and press his lips down on Taeyong’s. Tell him that he looks just as good as he thinks Johnny might.

And yet there’s something holding him back. He doesn't know what it is, can’t even point a finger in the general direction of a logical explanation. Because in the moment, with the warm curl of Taeyong’s tail around his thigh, hands on his chest, eyes on his lips, Taeyong’s giving him nothing but _Go Go Go_ signals.

He’s an inch before making the actual move, when they’re interrupted by a hushed gasp.  
  


 _“Oh my!”_   
  


It’s Jungwoo, from a few cubicles down from theirs, and he’s got a overjoyed, happy grin on his face at their position. He’s standing in the half-opened doorway, one hand lifted to his face, the other still on the door handle.

Johnny doesn't know if Jungwoo is particularly dense, or why he’s so overjoyed in having interrupted an obviously intimate moment. 

His hands fall back down to his thighs before they could ever finish what they wanted to do.

Jungwoo does another happy sounding inhale of breath, and giggles.

“Can we congratulate yet?” Jungwoo’s shoulders bounce, and he's still got that frighteningly big smile on his face. “I said to Lucas we should do it after Kun had made the announcement, but he said you guys aren't out yet so we should wait until you make it public on your terms—,”

He babbles on about this vastly confusing topic, eyes as big as marbles as his eyes bounce between Taeyong and Johnny. Johnny has half of an instinct to turn himself slightly in front of Taeyong, skin crawling with any eyes on the kitten that aren’t his. It’s a stupid urge, one that he pinpoints to his alcohol intake.

“Our terms?” Johnny repeats, confused, feeling absolutely left out of the picture here.

“Yeah! I said arriving and leaving together for nearly half a year is basically making things as official as they can get, but you know how Lucas can be-,”  
  


He does not know how Lucas can be.  
  


Johnny turns his gaze to see if Taeyong’s getting any of this; more than he is, atleast. Taeyong’s tail curls tighter around his leg, and his ears shift in what Johnny’s come to recognize as confusion. So Taeyong hasn't got much of a clue either?

“Sorry, but what are you talking about?” Johnny interrupts the steady babbling stream of Jungwoo’s words, and the other man halts in his words.

His shoulders release some of that bubbly tension.

“Are you joking? Or are you serious. I’m sorry, I really can't tell.” Jungwoo’s big eyes switch back and forth between Taeyong and Johnny, laughing nervously as nobody in particular answers. A short second of deafening awkwardness settles.

“Your— I’m talking about you guys dating.” Jungwoo says, voice tilting unsure after both Johnny’s and Taeyong’s faces fall. “You guys are– an item, right?”

 _“No-,”_ Johnny stutters, while Taeyong has resorted to freezing up completely. Asingle gasp rushes out of Taeyong, but that’s all. 

Johnny’s gaze jumps from Taeyong to Jungwoo and then into the space between as he scrambles for something to say because apparently nobody else is. 

“No— no, not yet.” He says, without thinking much, and it is just a second later when his words register, that the moment takes a turn for the even worse.

Johnny has never had social anxieties, but right now he wishes for the ground to swallow him up whole. To chew him up and never spit him back out again.

Taeyong’s gone as red as a cherry, and he has let go of Johnny completely, even his tail just stiffly hanging in shock. Jungwoo’s eyebrows are raised under his fringe, and he’s got his mouth poised open as if he’s gonna say something, but he’s just _not_ doing anything- so Johnny scrambles to fix his own mistake he had just too smartly set into the world.

“I didn’t mean it like— like we _are gonna,_ I’m just- I’m just saying that we’re not dating, no. Don’t ask again, please—” Johnny wrings a hand over his face. Sounding defeated, embarrassed, any emotion in the realm of generally unpleasant.

“I’m gonna leave,” Jungwoo says, decidedly, as the first thing since instigating Johnny’s sanity melting down the drain. 

_“Yeah,”_ Johnny agrees, vehemently. “Do that.”  
  


When removing his hand from his face, he’s greeted by Taeyong looking up at him from an arms length away.

Their gazes hold on to each other, and Johnny’s got blood rushing in his ears as loud as an airplane taking off inside his head. A looming weight of fear hovers right above him, fear that he just majorly fucked something up, that he’s gotten all the signals wrong all this time, that Taeyong’s not even remotely into him after all- that Taeyong will revert to his previous self. That all those walls of keeping Johnny at arms length will return in full force. No more touching, no more companionable car rides, no more tail around his thighs.

He doesn’t trust his brain much after what just happened, but he still desperately tries to think of what to say, because Taeyong’s just standing there, looking at him, waiting on Johnny to fix his runaway mouth. Calculating. Unsure.  
  


Johnny swallows drily. “Do we need to– should we talk about that?”

“Yeah, probably,” Taeyong winces a little. He nods, a little detached from the situation, maybe. “Definitely. Actually, but I don’t want to.”

Johnny relaxes some. Relieved on the inside. He laughs, agreeing with Taeyong’s approach to this situation one-hundred percent. “Great, me either.”

A silence stretches where they’re just kind of left staring at each other again. Johnny’s fear of awkwardness returns at almost full force. Taeyong’s still stiff, but his ears aren’t flattened or in any position that would tell of discomfort. It’s a some balm to Johnny’s mind right now.

“I’m gonna get a drink.” Taeyong says decidedly, against Johnny’s expectations, and he just looks equally as uprooted by this immensely awkward situation as Johnny. A harshly relieved exhale of a laugh rushes out of Johnny, one that elicits a response of a similar sound of Taeyong. He adds: “A strong one.”

“ _Yeah,_ me too.” 

Turns out Johnny’s worries were grounded in nothing but reality-detached insecurities. Or maybe Taeyong’s just more dream than reality. There’s a span of time it takes to nurse two beers in which they’re both drifting to other groups, Ten stealing Taeyong away from Johnny the second they’re more than a foot apart.

Yet, their gazes keep crossing across the room. Like magnets, and Johnny’s absolutely tired of this comparison, but his gaze can never stay off of Taeyong for long, and maybe it’s the alcohol speaking, but he doesn't want to be away from him either.  
  


Jaehyun catches on to the fact that Johnny’s not even loosely listening to him pretty quickly, and when Johnny zones back into Mark’s and his conversation, it’s to the leaked naked pictures of Kun’s father, their former CEO, he apparently posted to a seeking sugarbabies portal.

“Hold on, _what—_ ” Johnny whisper-yells, eyes bouncing between Jaehyun and Mark, who stare back unfazed, emotionless. Until Donghyuck, who had apparently been observing the situation, begins cackling, and falls against Johnny’s shoulder so unexpectedly, that Johnny only barely keeps his beer from spilling.

He’s chosen a non-alcoholic beer, because he’s still the designated driver, while Taeyong’s strong drink of choice had been a gin tonic. A fancy thing Ten had made, and one that’s just barely hitting half-emptiness as Johnny’s gaze flicks to Taeyong involuntarily.

Taeyong’s eyebrows quirk up in question at the sudden outburst from Donghyuck, along with a little lift of his chin, and Johnny just rolls his eyes in answer. Taeyong laughs, and Johnny thinks that _jesus_ , he’s deserved to know how it feels to kiss around Taeyong’s fangs by now, and if it wasn't for Jungwoo that _little—_ he stops that thought before it turns ugly. 

Taming himself does not lessen the blow of bemoaning the fact that he’s pretty sure he could’ve found out how it feels to have Taeyong little kitten fangs dig into his lower lip if things had gone differently earlier.  
  


It’s not long before he’s at the buffet, loading up on the cream puffs that are absolutely _godly-_ when he feels the light touch of what he knows by now against the back of his knee, and he looks to his right to see Taeyong slide into the space that was empty. He avoids Johnny’s gaze as he acts very fixated on loading his own plate with food, but his cheeks pinken up.

Once his gaze tips up he discards the facade of indifference, and his ears shake happily once as he’s greeted with Johnny’s private smile. Taeyong’s own little but full lips turn up in a bashful smile, and his tail moves up to around the bend of Johnny’s knee. Johnny’s chest turns relieved at their recovery from that earlier situation. It’s one thing to have some flirty eye contact exchanges, but being near without the stifling shame from earlier is ten times better.  
  


Then, Taeyong bites half off of a cream puff, and grimaces at the custard pushing out at the other end of it. He cleans his finger right off with his tongue in a motion that looks much too natural. Pink little tongue curling around his slim fingers to gather the white stuffing.

“Oops,” he says, not even teasing, just generally in the realm of embarrassed, bashful, trying to get rid of the mess. Funnily enough, that makes it even worse for Johnny, Taeyong not even _knowing_ what he does to Johnny.

 _Kitty likes cream,_ his brain supplies a little helplessly.

Kitty also likes teasing him for the rest of the evening, never too far away that Johnny can’t reach him with an extended hand, lips plush around the beer bottle as he holds Johnny’s gaze pointedly. Keeps touching Johnny, too, hands clenching into his biceps and his shoulder when someone tells something funny. During the evening, they travel from people to people, mostly just Donghyuck who finds it awfully easy to be the life of the party. 

Even while Kun’s talking something rather sentimental about teamwork and bonding and general accomplishments, Johnny can’t do but drink in the air between them loaded with electricity only they can feel. Or so he thought, because apparently it’s also everybody who chooses to pay attention. 

So it happens that at one point Ten follows Johnny to the empty meeting room as Johnny goes to get another beer and take a quick breather, after Taeyong pouts and unwinds his tail from the taller man.

Johnny jolts when Ten slides into the space next to him, unaware he wasn’t alone. Ten just looks at him for a few moments, ears up, and then says: “so are you guys gonna hook up tonight?”

Johnny nearly chokes on his sip of beer, hacking out a few dry coughs before he manages to get air back into his lungs again normally. Looking up, it’s into Ten’s pleased face, a sick sort of glee written in the way he just watched Johnny hack out a piece of his lung. Johnny coughs, narrowing his eyes at Ten. He’s got the feeling that Ten likes exactly that, getting the floor out beneath people just with his words, catching them off guard. 

“You’re evil,” Johnny says. “How did you even manage to make Kun fall in love with you?”

“First thing is debatable,” Ten answers, tilting his head. “Second thing I myself haven't figured out yet.”

His smile shifts here, away from the sly grin to something more genuine, softer. Oddly, Johnny gets a feeling like he’s intruding on something he shouldn't.

Johnny clears his throat a little awkwardly. 

“I’m- I’m happy for you.” He says, and it sounds weird saying it out loud, but he’s really got no weird motives behind saying it.

“Thanks,” Ten chirps easily, having lost that slick cover of mischievousness. “Listen, Johnny,” he begins, crossing his arms. Just by the shift of tone, Johnny knows the talk is gonna turn serious. An unpleasant thickness begins in his throat.

“Taeyong, he-,” Ten sighs, shifting his hip against a close by table. 

“He likes you a lot. I don't really understand how this-,” he shifts his arm away from his crossed one, waving in Johnny’s general direction, “-has taken that long with obvious he was being. I even thought you actually were an item or fucking on the regular down-low somewhere in between, when you came in to work smelling like Taeyong’s heat, but by tonight it’s pretty painfully obvious you’re both toeing around it.”  
  


This isn’t what Johnny expected. Something vaguely threatening just like Ten usually is, or something related to Kun, maybe.

But Taeyong being obvious? Johnny’s brain lags three sentences behind on Ten’s words. He knows he should be listening, but the detail of Taeyong’s recuperation is what makes his mind lag. It takes him a minute to respond. 

“What? _How-_ how was he obvious?”

Ten pulls his eyebrows up in a pitying expression. “You serious?” 

Johnny remains silent, and Ten deflates with a muttered complaint about _damn people never paying attention in class;_ he rubs a hand on his temple, before fixing Johnny with a look again. “You're telling me you’ve got no clue what all the tail touching has meant, yeah?”

Here, Johnny recoils a little. He knows what that means. Eyebrows pulled together, he answers. “What? Yeah, I do. It’s a sign of friendship.”

Ten has the audacity to snort, ears shaking. “Let me guess. That what Taeyong told you?”

At Johnny’s nod, Ten laughs again, this time in disbelief. “And of course you never thought about looking it up, you big, _dumb_ fool.” 

“Hey,” Johnny defends weakly, but he knows Ten wasn’t that serious about it. His doubt must show on his face, as Ten shifts into the nicer realm of facial expressions, sighing.

“Okay, listen here, to your apparently only other source of information about cat hybrid’s way of communication,” Ten’s shoulders shake some more, before he continues. “Curling your tail around another cat’s tail, that’s a sign of friendship, _deep_ friendship, best friend kind of friendship, you get me?”

Johnny nods, recalling how Ten’s and Taeyong’s tails curl together when Ten pesters Taeyong in his cubicle. Ten continues right on. “Then there’s another meaning to it. It's an affiliative, flirty behavior. Their tail touching you is a cat showing their attraction to you; meaning that you’ve bonded from their point of view. To make this a little clearer, Taeyong is friendly with many people here, right? You would agree?” 

Johnny nods again, and Ten nods in turn. “And how many people does he let his tail touch on?” 

That’s an easy answer. 

“None,” Johnny answers, looking back into Tens expectant face. It takes a second, then it dawns on him. 

“Oh,” he says, realizing something that makes warmth spread all through his chest.

“Yeah, _‘oh!’”_ Ten repeats gleefully, his face souring afterward. “Stop looking like that, it’s weird.”

Johnny tries, but the smile won’t wipe off of his face. “Sorry,” he says, after a few futile tries. “That means he likes me, right?”

“Yeah, not sure why. But Taeyong likes you a lot,” Ten shifts, “and now comes the actual reason I pulled you aside, before I had to break you in on basic cat hybrid communication 101,” Ten scowls, and Johnny has the urge to apologize. “Brush up on that, by the way, if you want this to work out.”

Johnny takes a sip of his beer, trying to stay focused on the conversation. He knows Ten’s telling him stuff he does absolutely want to know, but his mind fights heavily against common sense, wanting to indulge in the fuzzy memories of all the times Taeyong’s tail curled around the back of his knee.  
  


“Look, Taeyong has been single for a long, long time— as long as I know him and even before, okay? He’s not as out there, because in his mind he doesn’t really fit the norm of a catboy and it’s caused him trouble in the past,—”

Johnny frowns. By that one talk he had with Taeyong, the first seedlings of doubt had already been settling inside of him. Wondering why such a dreamboat was still single. That the answer is his introversion comes as little surprise to Johnny, who’s the expert on knowing how long it takes to break down Taeyong’s walls by now.

“— based on the fact I just had to explain tail position meanings, I rest assured you’re not one of those hybrid fetishists, but I will bury my claws in your eye if you break his heart or make him feel inferior in any way. Clear?” 

“Clear as day,” Johnny repeats, as if a button had been pushed. “Wait, you guys have claws?” 

Ten tilts his head, making a sound between his teeth. His ears flatten. “What did I say about Taeyong not fitting the norm.” 

He mutters something about the runt of the litter that Johnny can’t quite catch, but it hooks nonetheless. 

“What?” He asks. 

Ten repeats the last phrase a little more clearly, shifting against the table. “He’s never told me, but I think he was the runt of the litter. As I said, he’s not the norm of a cat hybrid, and in our world that can get you some stupid comments.”

Ten turns his face away. “I’m saying he’s had enough bad experiences, okay? I’m trying to make sure you’re not one of them.”

His tail swings out from behind him, flicking sideways. Something in Johnny softens even more than Taeyong’s supposed affections had done. It’s taken some time, but now it hits him that this is no weird joke Ten’s pulling for his own amusement, but that this is a friend looking out for someone they care about.

“Don't worry I- I will treat him right, if it works out, tonight and everyday.” It sounds way too cheesy, even to his own hardened _helpless-romantic_ ears. He winces, and Ten pulls a grimace. His tail ticks up, ears shuffling, Ten’s smirk broadens. 

“Not sure if that’s what he wants tonight, but good to know, Johnny Seo.”  
  


With that, Ten pushes off of the table, and begins walking back to the main room. Leaving a stunned, furiously blushing Johnny in his wake.

For a moment, Johnny’s brain buffers. Then, he takes a deserved, long swig of his beer. 

_Jesus_ , he thinks, _this evening is an emotional one._   
  


It’s almost all happening a little too fast for him to comprehend– _Taeyong really likes you,_ Ten’s word repeat. The sentence makes his heart pitter patter happily, but at the same time he knows that it’s not unmovable, that it’s basically just hearsay. He knows Taeyong likes him platonically by now. What he still doesn’t know is if Taeyong feels the same way he does. Is he self-sabotaging? Why can’t he just let the fuzzy carbonated feelings in his chest be?

He’s got to get a grip on himself. And he’s got to find something other than liquid courage to toughen up and make his move on Taeyong. He laughs a little to himself again at that thought, taking another sip of his beer. If there’s one thing he’s been consistently doing for the last months, it’s making moves on Taeyong. And for a long time the results were so little that he wasn’t even sure he was moving forward on some days. 

It’s funny, that the second he gets the go with some surety that Taeyong might be reciprocating his feelings, that all his work had paid off in some way— that it’s then that he freezes up in fear. Of what exactly, Johnny doesn’t even know himself. Rejection?

The only sure thing he knows, is that the single obstacle left in his way, keeping him from finding out if Taeyong feels the same way as he does, is himself.

Johnny’s mind is still reeling a little, rushing through moments that stuck with him over the past months. How embarrassed and jumpy Taeyong had been that night he came to work with his heat-addled mind, and he’d been so shaky, clutching onto his tail to keep it away from Johnny.

Now? If he was a stranger, Johnny wouldn’t even think that had been the same person that Taeyong is today.

He goes by the buffet to grab another cream puff pastry, eyes scanning the little clusters of people together. He spots one pair of black ears, but it’s not the one he’s looking for. Deciding to freshen up a little, he walks out on to the hallways. As soon as he passes by the door to the exit stairs, he almost collides bodily with a person coming up from the staircase, doors swinging open with a _pang._

He barely avoids them both toppling over after the door opens unexpectedly, hands on a thin waist clad in soft fuzzy fabric.

“Oh, there you are!” Taeyong jips at the same time Johnny asks a confused: “Where the hell did you come from?”

Because, well, it’s not particularly usual to use the staircase when you’re on the thirtieth floor. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Taeyong seems decently out of breath, as he rights himself up out of Johnny’s hands. 

“I helped Kun with carrying some more beers up.” Taeyong says, turning to the right of the floor. Johnny flexes his hands open once, twice, before following.

“Up from where?” Johnny stops walking, voice turning louder in disbelief. “Did you just walk up thirty floors!?”

“No! Jesus,” Taeyong laughs, and his tail flicks high enough to beat against Johnny’s hip. Johnny barely suppresses the urge to grab it and pull on it playfully. But the thought is there, and it stays a little longer than welcomed, too. Followed by the image of a tug, pulling Taeyong close and finding out just how much want is reciprocated when he pushes his lips onto the kitten’s ones.  
  


“It was in the fridge of the design department, since they have an actual kitchen-sized fridge. For some reason.”

Johnny hums when Taeyong turns toward him, eyes slipping from Taeyong’s face to his ears, a little pinker than usual, and continues following Taeyong without much thought. Taeyong seems to catch on to it, too, and he laughs a little with a pointed gaze to Johnny.

“I'm gonna go put this in the cloakroom ‘cause I’m a little sweaty after all.” 

He tugs on the collar of his jacket, and Johnny nods. He didn’t even notice Taeyong had put the thing back on.

“Yeah,” Johnny agrees, thinking that he’s got nothing else to do but just follow along, since he’s been a little hot under the collar since his talk with Ten anyway. As an act of deflection dealing with his own feelings, he says a little jab.

“That’s ‘cause you never move. Aren’t hybrids supposed to have a really good metabolism?”

“Not everybody can be as hunky as you,” Taeyong responds, easily. A grin spreads over Johnny’s lips, because it’s not often that Taeyong’s gets in the mood for some annoying banter, but when he does, Johnny loves it. Loves when Taeyong is all cocksure retorts and bratty expressions. “Or wants to, for that matter.”

“That’s a poor excuse and you know it,” Johnny snorts, laughing. “You couldn't bulk up if you wanted to.”

“That's ‘cause I don’t want to. Sure I could, but I like me like this. On the days I’m not made to carry beer crates multiple floors up, at least.”

“What _was_ Kun thinking, asking you to help him,” Johnny ponders, eyes on the way Taeyong’s shoulders move when he slips the jacket off before they’ve entered the coatroom. Broad, angular, sickeningly pretty.

“Right?” Taeyong’s laughs, loudly, pushing the door to the coatroom. Almost everybody dumped their bags and jackets in here, and it takes a bit of maneuvering around a fallen bag right behind the door to get inside. “If you really wanna know, he wanted some relationship advice on how to treat a catboy right.”

He says that with a look over his own shoulder, and a wicked curl to the corner of his mouth, before looking away again.

Heat shoots up to Johnny’s cheeks at that. Maybe, he thinks, he should look by Kun’s office, too; Ask him if he’s going through the same things as Johnny is, with falling in love with a catboy. He can’t help the tug of jealousy in his gut, either, wondering what raunchy things Kun might’ve coaxed out of his kitt— _Taeyong_ with just some practiced words. Johnny pointedly ignores his mental stumble.

Still, he wonders. Wonders why he’s got all the emotions that would make any person confess their love on sight,- even as he’s been circling through them for months- and still can’t own up to his own cowardice. He wants to go to the bathroom, look his reflection in the eyes long and deep and point a finger at himself and maybe threaten himself into confessing. Instead, he just follows Taeyong back to the main room like the lovesick puppy he is.

Like prior times, Taeyong gets touchy with an increased buzz of alcohol. 

In a cluster of people, Lucas loudly entertains people with some story of how he broke three bones at the same time during some motocross accident when he was sixteen. While Lucas gesticulates wildly, Taeyong’s hand stays on Johnny’s bicep, curled between Johnny’s ribs and the swell of muscle in his arm. When it’s not that, it’s Taeyong’s tail, calmly slung around the side of his leg.

The constant touches, the exchanged gazes through his lashes up at Johnny; they keep a steady-running warmth in Johnny’s chest and bottom of his spine like a locomotive run on affection and attention. And it’s driving some sort of foretaste up his throat, an undefined urge sitting in his neck.

It’s late already, and there's a weird urge of _something_ beneath Johnny’s skin. Maybe it’s anticipation, or some sort of expectancy for _something_ to happen.  
  


“You wanna go home?” He murmurs, downward to Taeyong. 

Taeyong’s head tilts up, ears first, then eyes up to Johnny’s face- sluggish, faltering as they catch on his lips. And just like that, the rest of noise around them buzzes out into static in Johnny’s brain, tunnel-vision on Taeyong. His head tilts against Johnny’s shoulder as he looks up, cheeks flushed with intoxication.

“Hm?” Taeyong asks, both hands around Johnny’s bicep now, eyes big as doll’s ones as he looks at Johnny, who repeats the question again through a thickly feeling throat. Voice low and private. 

“You’ll come up to help carrying things, yeah?”

Brain looping on _‘you’ll come up-’_ Johnny takes a second too long to nod. Caught up in watching Taeyong’s lips form the words, how he shapes his name between beer-slicked pinkness. Plush, with the loveliest cupids bow.

Johnny is moderately buzzed, kind of sober, but definitely noticing his imaginings have taken on a more vibrant hue than usual.

Noticeable by the how he wants to pull Taeyong’s face into a kiss right here and now, palm as big as the side of his face, sweep his hands down to his neck. To indulge in what he wants for once, not minding what the others might do, Taeyongs tail around his leg and his own hands on the kitten.

Maybe, have Taeyong giggle once they seperate, embarrassed and shy, trying to hide his red face in Johnny’s shoulder, while Johnny laughs and says that he just can't resist his boyfriend sometimes.

Taeyong’s head lifts off of his shoulder when Jaehyun continues the saga of unfortunate events in one’s childhood, but he remains close along Johnny’s side, never once _not_ touching him, never not lighting Johnny’s whole body up with just a look.  
  


It sets off just as many if not more synapses when they leave, and Johnny guides Taeyong into the cloakroom by a steady hand on his lower back. Less than a hand’s width away from the base of Taeyong’s inky black tail. 

They get dressed, and then they stack up the mostly emptied dishes, the ones Taeyong had received many compliments for over the course of the evening, and it’s not long before they make it to the car. All the while the resonating tension of _something_ warm hovers between them, fueled by touches and shy flicks of Taeyongs tail and heavy-lidded gazes.

On the drive home, Taeyong’s spends most of the time watching the passing lights of the city. They’re both a little lost in thoughts, he guesses.

He doesn’t know what Taeyong’s thinking about, but whatever it is, it’s making the end of his tail curl in happy little twists of half-moons across his thighs and knees.

It beats against the stick shift; and maybe a little uninhibited, and mind stuck on all the things he should admit to, all the things he _wants_ , Johnny lets loose of the gearstick when he’s at a red light, and closes his fingers around the soft sweep of Taeyong’s tail instead.

It makes Taeyong look away from the window, eyes bouncing from Johnny’s hand on his tail up to Johnny’s face and down again, lips a little open, before morphing into a shy laugh on his lips. 

Johnny smoothes his hand down the tail like Taeyong said he likes, and laughs a little, too. 

“Okay, right?” He asks, just because this is still so new, and he’s thought about it so often, that the real thing still has him feeling like he shouldn’t be doing it.

“If I minded, you’d know,” Taeyong says, in a repetition of their earlier talk about tail touching, and Johnny exhales a huff, rolling his eyes. He lets the soft fur caress against the inside of his palm, before letting loose as the stoplight turns green.

“Hey, keep doing it,” Taeyong protests, lips petulant pushed out. “Feels nice.”

A whole lot of happy, buzzy feelings go off inside Johnny, and he laughs, shifting in the proper gear, and taking hold of Taeyong’s tail, already flicked across the center console insistently.

He tightens his hand, lets the fur travel through the clasp he’s got as he drags it downward, to the end. It’s not long before there’s another low sound joining the tinny car-radio, a sound that Johnny recognizes instantly. 

With a happy little jolt of his heart, he looks over to see Taeyong’s eyes slid nearly close, ears ruffling his fringe peacefully, the corners of his lips curled up, kittenish. He starts the same motion again, letting his fingers run through the fur, and the rumbling sound of Taeyong’s purr intensifies.

The sound stops when Johnny parks the car in front of Taeyong’s building.

Pretty quickly, the dishes are stacked in a way that wont get all of their clothes dirty, and they make their way up Taeyong’s still- cursedly- dark staircase. Taeyong almost drops the big salad bowl while trying to get the door unlocked, and his face is so comically wide in fear that Johnny laughs. It gets him a purposeful flick of Taeyong’s tail against his thigh when he manages to get it open, and Johnny follows him inside, still laughing lowly.

He deposits his stack of tupperware and plates on the kitchen counter as Taeyong puts his in the sink, and walks back to close the door and flick the light on properly.

With Taeyong’s back turned to him, Johnny tries to collect his scattered thoughts, and gather actual confidence for once. 

He leans against the side of the counter that makes it able to look into the living room. There’s still the heap of blankets on the bigger sofa, and the mess of jackets over the backrest. He soaks in the sight, trying to get every insight to Taeyong he can. He wonders if the red couch is the one Taeyong takes naps on, or if it’s the bigger, grey one, facing the TV. It would be large enough for the two of them, if he were to pull Taeyong on top of him, maybe put on one of those stupid romantic movies he likes to indulge in, and steal a blanket from Taeyong’s nest.

The image of the two of them, laughing at the stupidly filmed kisses in those romcoms, Taeyong showing him the right way to kiss someone with sharper teeth, tail swishing across the backrest with Johnny’s hands on the small of his back, Taeyong’s ones around his neck— it sets off a pang within him. 

He wants that, so bad. He wants to feel the rumble of Taeyong’s purr again, chests pressed together. He wants to fix all those stupid cliches hybrid porn had instilled in his pubescent brain when Taeyong lets him push his hands beneath his sweater, how to help Taeyong through a heat properly, what kind of kisses he likes best— 

Johnny’s got his mind set on something, and he does not want to chicken out again. Not today, not after how this evening went so far.

With the thought of making evenings fixated absolutely on each other a regular thing, Johnny clears his throat, saying Taeyong’s name softly.   
  


He’s got the words right behind his teeth, mind made up that he’s just going to do it. Taeyong turns around happily, tail curling sideways, ears perked up. But then, before Johnny can say anything but his name again, Taeyong’s eyes get wide, and he walks past Johnny out of the kitchen.

“Oh!” Taeyong says before he passes by, “I almost completely forgot!”

With those words, he vanishes in a room Johnny would guess to be the bedroom. In the little break Johnny gets, he exhales harshly, rubbing his hands over his face. 

_Get a grip, Johnny Seo,_ he thinks vehemently. One last make or break moment, and he could have the happiest life he could dream of.  
  


Just one conversation to have. And yet, it frightens Johnny with a terror of the cosmic scale.  
  


Taeyong walks back into sight, something in his hands Johnny can’t quite make out yet. Only when Taeyong stops in front of him, he recognizes the grey knit as his own sweater.

“Thank you, again, Johnny.” Taeyong says, a little shyer than before, a flush on his ears.

In a comical reversal of roles, Taeyong stands there, holding the sweater, while Johnny fights the urge to plunk his own face into the fabric that must surely smell like the cotton-y clean, flowery scent of Taeyong.

Maybe because Johnny is a brainless ape regarding senseful approaches to sensitive matter- mostly about Taeyong, he says: “Did it help?”

The implications of his question show themself in a tenfold flush on Taeyong’s cheeks, eyes averting quickly. Johnny connects the dots- giving someone something to lessen a heat, and then asking if it helped. Unwillingly, images flood his mind.

“Y-yes,” Taeyong stutters, tail flicking. “It helped a lot.”

Here’s a way to put what happens next: Johnny is a patient man. He is. And his fuse is correspondingly with the wooing he’s been doing, over a year long by now. But in this moment, Taeyong as red as a cherry, implying that it was Johnny’s scent that he’s come to and with- _multiple times,_ after a whole evening of loaded touches and eye contacts—

Johnny’s fuse snaps.

The sweater falls to the kitchen floor, immediately forgotten, as Johnny crosses the minimal distance between them to move a hand behind Taeyong’s neck, and press his lips onto Taeyong’s.  
  


He can’t even begin to regret- just the first thread of doubt even forming,- when Taeyong makes a muffled sound, winding his arm up, right around Johnny’s shoulders, the nails of his other hand digging into his bicep. His lips slide open, letting Johnny’s tongue push past his teeth, moaning when Johnny pushes them both forward to rest against the counter.

Johnny lets his tongue push further, thumb slotting beneath the sharp edge of Taeyong’s jaw, and enjoying the wet heat of the kitten’s mouth.

“Fuck,” he says, eloquently, when they seperate for a much needed kiss. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

Big, big eyes look at him, up through a messy fringe. Taeyong’s chest moves as rapidly as his own, and Johnny can’t help but trace the motion Taeyong’s tongue travels across his plump bottom lip.

The moment stretches- like a rubber band too tight, and Taeyong just stares at him with his big bambi eyes, looking like something in his world had majorly shifted. Johnny’s mouth sours.  
  


“Please– I didn’t get this wrong, did I?” He moves to push himself out of Taeyong’s bodyspace, but before he can, Taeyong’s tail curls around his thigh with a strength he hadn’t experienced before. Taeyong’s hand on his biceps tightens.

“N-no,” Taeyong stutters, licking his lips again, and Johnny’s brain does that tunnel-vision thing. “No, you didn’t. Not at all.”

He pulls Johnny back fully into his space again, decidedly. Johnny doesn’t dare to question. “I was just surprised.”

With that, he tips up on his toes again, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I wanted this, too. I– I like you a lot, Johnny.” 

He says that, ears flicking uncertainty, eyes searching. Johnny feels like cooing and curling Taeyong in a never-ending hug, as the words send a burst of happiness through him he didn’t believe to be possible. 

God, it’s really just Taeyong that gets him like this. 

“I like you, too, Taeyong.” He smiles, dopily. Johnny’s hand rests on the back of Taeyong’s waist, and as he says those words, Taeyong does a happy little sag into his body. 

Johnny feels like exploding, like peppering kisses all over Taeyong until he gets tired of him, until he gets fired for indecent public displays of affection. Taeyong smiles up at him, pretty as he is, and Johnny moves the hand from where it laid underneath Taeyong’s jaw to brush the stubborn strands of hair out of his face. Taeyong’s eyes squeeze closed, and Johnny continues his trace of the kitten’s face. Big, big smiles are in both their faces, his hand dragging more upward. He moves through tufts of hair, flopping back onto Taeyong’s forehead after passing, and up, over his softly folding black ear. Johnny’s hand is tender, stroking it softly.   
  


For a moment, it’s just them- soaking each other up, until Johnny speaks again.  
  


“Didn't get to say that, earlier,” he watches, transfixed, as Taeyong’s eyes slip open slowly at his low tone. He waits until Taeyong’s eyes meet his, soft, unguarded, letting his hand curl around the side of his face again. “You look really good tonight.”

Taeyong’s face turns a little in his hold, shoulders lifting with a little laugh. “Mh, didn’t work as well as I thought it would.”

Johnny’s thumb pulls across Taeyong's jaw, indulgently. There’s a happiness in every single motion in Taeyong. Nonetheless, his eyebrows twitch up at the kitten’s words. “What do you mean?”

At Johnny’s thumb dipping in the slope below his lower lip, Taeyong’s lids droop momentarily. His irises are blown wide when he holds Johnny’s gaze again. “Didn't get your hands on me as soon as I’d hoped.”

Johnny’s stomach swoops considerably, heat adding to the mix of the batshit crazy cocktail of emotions he consumed over the evening. There’s a glimmer of mirth in Taeyong’s big eyes, and Johnny realizes that he’s at the shorter end of the kitten’s teasing.

Johnny’s own lips quirk up. He can play that game, too.

“Does that mean I get to pull it off of you, too?

Taeyong laughs breathily, face dropping out of Johnny’s hold as his head dips forward onto Johnny’s chest. Johnny’s hand drops to his waist instead, wrapping around the thin side of it. Taeyong’s head tilts up again with a changed expression.

“Johnny Seo, I don’t put out on the first date,” Taeyong speaks through a smile that looks way too much like one of Ten’s. Curled up in the corners and lazy confidence written in the line between his lips.

Johnny squeezes Taeyong’s waist playfully.

“Was worth a try. I’m trying to be a bit more bold lately,” Johnny’s face stretches in a annoyingly big smile. Only thing better than that is seeing Taeyongs face do the same.

He zeroes in on Taeyong’s lips- vividly pink, swollen and pretty, revealing the pretty points of his fangs, only allows one coherent thought in his brain.

“Can I kiss you again?”

“Absolutely, Johnny,” Taeyong says, fingers tightening their hold on Johnny in anticipation. “I don’t even want you to ask anymore.”

Johnny rolls his eyes a little, but gives in to the cute little tug Taeyong tries to exude on his broader form, pushing his smile onto Taeyong’s pouted lips. It’s not as desperate this time- rather, a slow enjoyment of each other. Warm, softer, as Johnny winds his arm around Taeyong’s waist to pull them against each other completely. They _fit—_ so well it makes his head dizzy, Taeyong pushing up into the kiss, making a soft little noise of contentment. His tail curls in sated movements, brushing against the inside of Johnny’s leg.   
  


When they part this time, Taeyong buries his face in Johnny’s neck, sighing dreamily. Johnny drags a hand through the mess of Taeyong’s hair again, and Taeyong nuzzles into his space even more. He does those shuddery inhales again- as if he’s trying to get as much air in his lungs as possible, and Johnny is reminded of a question left unanswered weeks ago.  
  
He trails a hand down the soft curve of Taeyong’s back as he forms the question. “Actually- after the announcement- I was wondering, how sensitive are hybrid’s noses actually?” 

Taeyong stops the endearing inhales the second Johnny asks, removing himself from Johnny’s neck as if caught in the act.

“They’re– good enough.” Taeyong stutters, ears turned increasingly more pink. His hand moves up from Johnny’s bicep, up to his neck. Taeyong’s eyes shake, from his own hand trailing across Johnny’s body, to Johnny’s eyes and back down again. “Scent plays a big role in attraction.”

Johnny’s brain, once again, is lagging behind. He thinks about the moments he’d seen Taeyong’s shoulders do the tremor of inhalation, each time he was close- and how usually it was a flustered expression that followed. And an ability to meet his eyes. 

As if watching a powerpoint show, Johnny begins to think that all the times he’d made Taeyong turn away in disgust, made uncomfortable, Taeyong had simply dealing with his end of tribulations of attraction. 

His gaze, having trailed off with his thoughts, snaps back to Taeyong’s eyes. Already waiting, wide-eyed. “Does that mean—”

His words hover between them, left unfinished. Taeyong starts tentatively, hands locking behind Johnny’s neck. 

“Means that your scent drove me absolutely crazy.” 

Johnny feels something in him preen at that, even more at the repeating halt Taeyong’s eyes have on his lips.  
  
“It had me confused for a long time, you know, that you— just suddenly appearing at work, smelling like a dream, and acting like the dreamboat you were- _are-_ and not giving up on courting me- that you really meant it. That it wasn’t some joke.” 

Taeyong laughs a little shyly, and Johnny’s hands rest atop his belt, in the soft little dip of his stomach and taper of his waist. Waiting, for Taeyong to continue. Waiting, for the warmth inside his body to last a lifetime.

“You might’ve noticed. That you- you were enough to confuse both me, my hormones and my body. Made me go into heat way more than I should ‘cause I was so decided on you already. Ready. You should be happy Kun’s as understanding as he is. Other places would have fired me by the first unscheduled one.”

Johnny winces, pulling his shoulders up guiltily, Taeyong giggles. All the words out of Taeyong’s mouth are like a balm to his ego- to know that all this time, even if it didn’t look like it to most- that Taeyong had been just as infatuated as him. It makes some barriers from earlier seem insignificant. Makes months worth it with just some sentences out of Taeyong’s mouth.

And what lovely sentences those were— Taeyong being decided on him, infatuated enough to get confused, shy enough to loose his grip on his tail.  
As if a switch flicked on, Johnny suddenly, vividly, remembers reading about how hybrid’s bodies could go into heat once decided to have found a suitable partner, regardless of their cycle.

Why that memory only surfaces now, he doesn’t know. He blames it on his brain, and the fact that Taeyong seems to be able to turn off any coherent thought processes within his skull.

“If you’ve— why didn’t you say something-,” Johnny pouts, thinking of how much sooner they could have had this if they both weren’t such cowards.

“Johnny,” Taeyong whines, drawn out. He deflates, shoulders bunching as he muffles a giggle into Johnny’s chest as he tips forward. “This is gonna sound so stupid, but remember the workshops we had to do beginning of the year?”

Remembering those would be an understatement. Johnny and Jaehyun still regularly make fun of the silly get-to-know-each-other games Kun had made them do. Forming circles and introducing themselves with adjectives, throwing yarns, pulling each other’s hands and guessing whose you were holding.

“Yeah, I do. So dumb,” Johnny laughs, and Taeyong agrees vehemently, fingers clenching against the back of Johnny’s jacket. 

Taeyong’s face gets even redder, embarrassed about what he must be thinking about. Johnny wants him to continue, but also wants to just shut him up by kissing him for the next five hours. The realization that now he could, sets firework off inside his brain. Grinning, he ducks down to press a kiss against the side of Taeyong’s prone, plush lower lip. It’s a fleeting touch, as to not derail Taeyong’s dialogue, put Taeyong does the cutest push up on his tippy toes to chase Johnny’s lips on his. It makes Johnny laugh, and he tuts in order to make Taeyong finish explaining.  
  
Sighing, Taeyong concedes.  
  


“There were those either or questions we had so sort ourselves into groups with, and you– you said you were a dog person, so I thought you didn’t like cat-hybrids–,” the end of his voice tilts off in a complainatory whine, and he pushes his face away from being looked at, and into Johnny’s shaking chest. Johnny rumbles with incredulous laughter, that of course Taeyong would find a way to twist Johnny answering a question like that into something to refrain himself from falling for someone.

“Okay,” Johnny grins, “prepare yourself for something really bold, you ready?”

Taeyong sags a little in his hold, but his ears stick up playfully. “If it takes longer for me to catch some air and get you to kiss me stupid again, I’m not willing.”

“Depends on you how long it takes,” Johnny returns, cheekily. There's a swarm of bees happily buzzing away in his chest, and he reaches up to flick against Taeyong’s ear before sinking back to his waist like magnetized. Addicted already, to his hands on Taeyong’s body. 

The words come out drenched in saccharine, marinated in fuzzy feelings for over a year. “Would you like to be my boyfriend?”

That gets a stupid giggle out of Taeyong, one that mirrors on Johnny’s face exactly.

“Thought you'd never ask, Johnny Seo,” he answers, and pulls Johnny down again by the hands pushing up into the short hairs of his nape. “Gladly.”

His canines dig in Johnny’s smile not a breath later. It stings, slightly. The best kind of amount, Johnny surmises, pushing a hand underneath that black sweater and his tongue between Taeyong’s teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhh and here we are,, at the end of what ive been lovingly referring to as office kitty au on twitter. But worry not! I too bemoan the nonexistent smut in this au but I kept this pg just because i gotta practice fluff. Also? Im gonna write a sequel to this tHATS a promise! because i love kitty yong! so if there were things left unexplained or you wished to be delved into further lemme know in the comments! Maybe they’ll pop up in the follow-up.

**Author's Note:**

> Was this pseudo furry shit? ,,,, mmm maybe? Kitty yong ascends the plane of mortal comprehension
> 
> Comments are always the best way to cheer me on! 
> 
> I also just made a twitter so follow me if you want (@tyongzu)


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